Product Description: This cultural history of mainline Protestantism and American cities--most notably, New York City--focuses on wealthy, urban Episcopalians and the influential ways they used their money. Peter W. Williams argues that such Episcopalians, many of them the country's most successful industrialists and financiers, left a deep and lasting mark on American urban culture...read more

A study of American thought and culture throughout history examines the individuals and documents that revealed significant ideas, issues, and movements. (view table of contents)

A study of American thought and culture throughout history examines the individuals and documents that revealed significant ideas, issues, and movements. (view table of contents)

Houses of God is a fascinating look at how Americans shape their places of worship into multifaceted reflections of their culture, beliefs, and times. Peter Williams divides the nation into seven distinctive regions - New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, the South, the Old Northwest, the Great Plains and Mountains, the Spanish Borderlands, and the Pacific Rim - and traces the historical development of and geographic influences on religious building in each. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 photographs - some by extremely well known photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange - this handsome book is the first to provide a broad survey of American religious architecture. It is a deeply interdisciplinary study in which Williams examines the influences of immigration and internal population movements; landscape and stylistic changes in architecture; and "secular, " liturgical, and theological influences. Accessible to the general reader as well as to the scholar, this volume will be welcomed by students of American social history, religion, and American studies, as well as by travelers and those who find religious architecture fascinating. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This is a collection of original essays on a wide variety of topics on religion in the United States, covering both historical and contemporary times, by the most exciting scholars working in the field today. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In a review in the Journal of Religion, the famed Martin Marty characterized Peter Williams as a productive wonder and America's Religions: Traditions and Cultures as a rich resource for readers who would like a 'state of the art' comment on the abundant religious phenomena which surround them...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Scholarly essays discuss such aspects of American social life and culture as sexual orientation, slavery, racism, and alcoholism

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