HEAVEN: Our 2000-Year-Old Fascination with the Afterlife by Lisa Miller

A nondenominational, accessible and groundbreaking history of the hereafter, HEAVEN draws from both history and popular culture to offer a new understanding of one of the most cherishedand sharedideals of spiritual life.

Untold millions believe heaven is a real place. As Lisa Miller demonstrates in this absorbing and enlightening book, thedesire for a celestial afterlife is universal - shared by faithful around the world and across religions - and is as old as the Bible itself. While there are many notions of what exactly heaven is and how we get there, the one point on which believers, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, agree is that heaven is God’s home.

HEAVEN is a 2,000-year tour through the fascinating history and intellectual geography of this transcendent territory. From the earliest biblical conceptions of the afterlife to the stories of extraordinary theological characters to the convictions and perceptions of ordinary people, Miller explores the roots of our beliefs in heaven and how they have evolved through the ages. She also reveals how the notion of heaven has been used for manipulation - to promulgate goodness and evil -  as inspiration for selfless behavior and justification for mass murder.

 

About the Author:

Lisa Miller is the Religion editor for Newsweek. She has a regular column in the magazine and on Newsweek.com and writes articles on a broad range of religion-related subjects. HEAVENwas inspired by “Visions of Heaven,” a Newsweek cover story the author wrote in 2002 which generated a huge audience response. The magazine will publish an excerpt from the book at publication. Formerly a senior special writer covering religion for the Wall Street Journal’s front page, she began her professional journalism career at the Harvard Business Review. Shehelped create the website, “OnFaith,” an online global conversation about religion and faith moderated by Newsweek and the Washington Postand has also worked for The New Yorkerand Self magazine.

Praise for book:

"Readers of HEAVEN will more likely than not find their own imaginations enriched, their experiences enhanced, their taste for exploration enlarged, and their impulse to reach out in empathy and hope quickened. They can then better appreciate life 'on this side' more than before. As for 'the other side,' what is ahead or beyond, honest people have to say, 'Wait and see!' "  - Martin E. Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

   

 "Lisa Miller has long been the fairest and most engaging journalist covering religion in America. In Heaven, she has accomplished the impossible: She has written a book about religion that fundamentalists, moderates, liberals, and nonbelievers alike can read with extreme pleasure." - Sam Harris, New York Times bestselling author of THE END OF FAITHand LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION     

 

"A rare combination of journalism, memoir, and historical research by a self-professed skeptic who nonetheless believes in hope, this smart yet heartfelt book leads us into the center of one of the greatest conversations of all time. And Lisa Miller is the perfect conversation partner, regaling us with the wisdom (and folly) not only of the official theologies of the ancients but also of the everyday improvisations of ordinary Americans wrestling with the Big Questions forever swirling around this most audacious of hopes.” -  Stephen Prothero, New York Times bestselling author of AMERICAN JESUS and RELIGIOUS LITERACY

 

“With grace and insight, Lisa Miller has done a remarkable thing: she has written a wonderful book that weaves together contemporary reporting and historical scholarship with skill and energy. The result is a smart and accessible take on the ultimate question: What is Heaven?  Lisa’s book is a good place to begin to find an answer.”  - Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of AMERICAN LION

"This fascinating, thoughtful, and challenging study tells us a great deal about what it means to be a human being." - - Karen Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of A History of God and The Case for God

“In this fine work, Miller, religion editor for Newsweek, surveys this fascinating subject from the earliest days of Judaism to contemporary expressions of faith.  Beneath her pleasing prose and often amusing observations about the afterlife, there is a longing, a desire to be part of what heaven really is.  And it is this sense of personal yearning that informs her delightful and insightful study…This marvelous work is a readable and wonderfully realized study of this ‘constant hope’ that we share.  And whether we align with Augustine or with the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, whether we’re informed by scripture or by popular culture, Heaven will delight and edify at every level.” - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Author: Lisa Miller

Add date: 2010-02-20