Synopses & Reviews
"Tom Levinson has written an engaging and lucid personal essay on a timely and timeless subject"
Joyce Carol Oates
A Road Trip Through the Highways and Backroads of American Spirituality
Theres nothing more American than a road tripand a spiritual road trip at that. From mosque to synagogue to chapel to coffee shop, Tom Levinsons entertaining and erudite stories of conversations with the faithful and the seeking get to the heart of religion in America today. All Thats Holy is a fascinating conversational collage set against the backdrop of the authors deepening appreciationboth intellectually and spirituallyof his own religious roots.
"Tom Levinson has given us a spiritual Odyssey, an extended adventure in the new meaning of faith and hope. Eloquent, heartfelt, and true, this is a book America needs."
James Carroll, author, Constantines Sword: The Church and the Jews and American Requiem, winner of the National Book Award
"I told everybody I know about this book. I love it!"
Ruth Malina, the author's grandma
"This is the best introduction to what is really going on in the multicolored religious lives of our dappled population you can lay hands on today."
From the Foreword by Harvey Cox, author, Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christians Journey Through the Jewish Year
Review
Wry, poignant, insightful and balanced, this travelogue is a keen first effort by Harvard Divinity School graduate Levinson, who embarked on a self-imposed pilgrimage of three months and 9,000 miles in a 1994 Nissan "traveling laboratory." Daunted by the scope of his own ambition, Levinson's business cards stated his mission and bolstered himself as the "Project Director" of "God Is: An Oral History of Faith in America." Armed with a cell phone, tape recorder and list of potential contacts, he traversed the landscape, initiating profound conversations in often unlikely places with likely and unlikely subjects such as southwestern U.S. Sikhs, converted Hasidic Jews, Wiccans in the Army, Texas evangelicals and Yorubans in a South Carolina roadside attraction, among nearly 100 others. Levinson's fluid style connects these rapid-fire interludes, beguiling the reader to peer with him into a cultural kaleidoscope of a gloriously pluralized religious landscape. A superb storyteller, Levinson's book lures like the very routes that beckoned him, where way leads on to way, path leads on to path. His insights about truth, tradition, choice and empathy arise in part from the road trip's powerful juxtapositions. For example, because he is a Jew, from the story of Moses he understood the Navajo tribal need to rely on a core of elders for community leadership. Coming to a just conclusion that "there is no going it alone," Levinson's thoughtful adventure proffers much hope and understanding for anyone interested in contemporary American culture. (Sept.) (
Publishers Weekly, July 14, 2003)
Levinson, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, recounts his pilgrimage across America in an old Nissan with earthiness, honesty, and optimism. His mission: to talk to people about religion and hear about their faiths. While his own family viewed Judaism-and religion in general-as a hobby that some families choose or a relic that others stash and dust off for special occasions, here he endeavors to show that religion can also be a vessel that funnels history from generation to generation. As his pilgrimage evolves and he gathers lessons along the way (e.g., "Pay attention to the places and people you think you have nothing to learn from. They're trying to tell you something"), the chapters take on a cohesiveness that strangely results from the platitudes and parables that he collects. His engaging style will help readers clarify religious meaning and might even encourage a few to embark on their own pilgrimages, newly assured that inner searching is worthwhile. Recommended for self-help, travel, or contemporary spirituality collections in public libraries and particularly in collections seeking to include religious diversity and books on the place of religion in America. —Leroy Hommerding, Fort Myers Beach PI. Dist., FL (Library Journal, October 1, 2003)
Review
"Tom Levinson has given us a spiritual Odyssey, an extended adventure in the new meaning of faith and hope. Eloquent, heartfelt, and true, this is a book America needs."
— James Carroll, author, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews and American Requiem, winner of the National Book Award
"Tom Levinson has written an engaging and lucid personal essay on a timely and timeless subject."
— Joyce Carol Oats, author, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Big Mouth Ugly Girl, and I'll Take You There
"I told everybody I know about this book. I love it!"
— Ruth Malina, the author's grandma
Synopsis
Join author Tom Levinson on his spiritual journey as he engages folks in mosques, synagogues, chapels, and coffee shops across America. He has meaningful conversations with the faithful while seeking get to the heart— and relevance— of religion in the United States today. This book presents a conversational collage that is set against the backdrop of the author's deepening appreciation (both intellectually and spiritually) of his own Jewish roots.
Synopsis
"Tom Levinson has written an engaging and lucid personal essay on a timely and timeless subject"
Joyce Carol Oates
A Road Trip Through the Highways and Backroads of American Spirituality
Theres nothing more American than a road tripand a spiritual road trip at that. From mosque to synagogue to chapel to coffee shop, Tom Levinsons entertaining and erudite stories of conversations with the faithful and the seeking get to the heart of religion in America today. All Thats Holy is a fascinating conversational collage set against the backdrop of the authors deepening appreciationboth intellectually and spirituallyof his own religious roots.
"Tom Levinson has given us a spiritual Odyssey, an extended adventure in the new meaning of faith and hope. Eloquent, heartfelt, and true, this is a book America needs."
James Carroll, author, Constantines Sword: The Church and the Jews and American Requiem, winner of the National Book Award
"I told everybody I know about this book. I love it!"
Ruth Malina, the author's grandma
"This is the best introduction to what is really going on in the multicolored religious lives of our dappled population you can lay hands on today."
From the Foreword by Harvey Cox, author, Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christians Journey Through the Jewish Year
Synopsis
Tom Levinson is a fourth-generation Jewish New Yorker who grew up a Christmas-tree-decorating, Judaism-heckling "doubting Thomas." As he got older he noticed that other people had different views, and he hungered to understand why.
All Thats Holy is a new twist on an age-old searcha spiritual road trip that chronicles both a personal pursuit of religious identity and meaning, and an outward-looking exploration of the varieties of American religious experience. From big cities to small towns, in prisons, monasteries, synagogues, and street corners, Tom both seeks out and stumbles upon people whose faith is more than it seems on the surface. Buddhists and Baptists, Muslims and Mormons, Pagans and PentecostalsToms conversations about faith and doubt weave together a poignant, memorable tapestry of American spirituality.
With the country as his classroom, Tom sketches a lively, funny, and evocative portrait of how people livewhether they see themselves as spiritual or religious, why theyve left (or remained in) the religious communities of their upbringing, and how they negotiate the tensions of living in an American culture at once highly secular and deeply religious. By the end of the road trip, Tom learns theres no place like home: a journey conceived to learn about the spiritual lives of others leads him to a newfound understanding of his own.
Synopsis
There's nothing more American than a road trip— and a spiritual road trip at that. From mosque to synagogue to chapel to coffee shop, Tom Levinson's entertaining and erudite stories of conversations with the faithful and the seeking get to the heart of religion in America today.
All That's Holy is a fascinating conversational collage set against the backdrop of the author's deepening appreciation— both intellectually and spiritually— of his own religious roots.
"Tom Levinson has given us a spiritual Odyssey, an extended adventure in the new meaning of faith and hope. Eloquent, heartfelt, and true, this is a book America needs."
— James Carroll, author, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews and American Requiem, winner of the National Book Award
"Tom Levinson has written an engaging and lucid personal essay on a timely and timeless subject."
— Joyce Carol Oates, author, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, and I'll Take You There
About the Author
Tom Levinson has written columns for Beliefnet, the popular Internet religion magazine, and is currently attending law school at the University of Chicago. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and former development director for the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice in Chicago. Levinson lives with his wife in Chicago. He recently sold his 1994 Nissan to a friend.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Harvey Cox.
Part One: Pilgrimage.
Part Two: Where Are You?
Part Three: Preponderance of the Small.
Part Four: Death and Texas.
Part Five: All That’s Holy.
Epilogue.
Acknowledgments.
The Author.