Saints and Sinners

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes a fascinating book about religion in America, about the passions, triumphs, and failures of the life of faith, revealing stories of grace and despair, sexual scandal and attempted murder.  •  "Insightful...vivid...beautifully rendered stories." —Chicago Tribune

Lawrence Wright's Saints and Sinners are Jimmy Swaggart, who preached a hellfire gospel with rock 'n' roll abandon before he was caught with a, prostitute in a seedy motel; Anton LaVey, the kitsch-loving, gleefully fraudulent founder of the First Church of Satan; Madalyn Murray O'Hair, whose litigious atheism sometimes resembled a brand of faith; Matthew Fox, the Dominican priest who has aroused the fury of the Vatican for dismissing the doctrine of original sin and denouncing the church as a dysfunctional family; Walker Railey, the rising star of Dallas's Methodist church, who, at the pinnacle of his success, was suspected of attempting to murder his wife; and Will Campbell, the eccentric liberal Southern Baptist preacher whose challenges to established ways of thinking have made him a legend in his own time."A serenely passionate chronicle of the cobbled byways of the human spirit." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Trenchant, fair-minded, gracefully written....Wright brings his subjects into sharp focus with plenty of perceptive details." —Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A very American struggle....[Wright] memorably articulates his battle...between doubt and belief." —Newsweek

"An entertaining, and insightful account...vivid...beautifully rendered stories." —Chicago TribuneLAWRENCE WRIGHT is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a playwright, and a screenwriter. He is the best-selling author of the novel, The End of October, and ten books of nonfiction, including Going Clear, God Save Texas, and The Looming Tower, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He and his wife are longtime residents of Austin, Texas.