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A review by greeniezona
Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible by Peter Manseau, Jeff Sharlet
4.0
Anyway, I can't stress to you enough how magnificent this book is. I keep trying to force various friends to at least read excerpts from the book, but the title seems to frighten people. My explanation of what it means never seemed to help any, so I'll refer you the authors' introductory essay, available on their website, www.killingthebuddha.com.
If you can't be bothered to visit the above links, here's the Sunday School version: Killing the Buddha is for people who are interested in religion but find the answers and explanations given in church to be a little too neat. This book is about the mess. It contains the work of thirteen different authors, each writing about a different book of the bible, and thirteen stories by the editors about their road trip around America looking for the face of religion. Most of the writing is brilliant, but of course some of the chapters are more brilliant than others. Before lending me the book, my sister raved on about Peter Trachtenberg's chapter, Job, which more than lived up to my expectations as a meditation on the nature of suffering. Samuel, by April Reynolds, strikes at the very heart of what has troubled religion since its very beginning: those who would use it as a means to gather power and glory to themselves. Though perhaps my favorite was Haven Kimmel's Revelation, which suggests, amongst other things, that basically John had gone off of his rocker when he wrote the last book of the Christian Bible. But maybe I'm just still bitter from reading (and discussing. over and over again.) that chapter so many times in Sunday School.
Then intertwined throughout are the tales of the people Manseau and Sharlet meet while driving around America. All of these stories are haunting, each of them moved me. But being a girl from Kansas, and more specifically, a girl who gets homesick when she watches Twister, it's not surprising that my favorite chapter was about storm chasers -- particularly, those who chase the super cells that create tornados. Swoon.
In short, Killing the Buddha is challenging, sickening, uplifting, and magnificent. Read it. Now.
If you can't be bothered to visit the above links, here's the Sunday School version: Killing the Buddha is for people who are interested in religion but find the answers and explanations given in church to be a little too neat. This book is about the mess. It contains the work of thirteen different authors, each writing about a different book of the bible, and thirteen stories by the editors about their road trip around America looking for the face of religion. Most of the writing is brilliant, but of course some of the chapters are more brilliant than others. Before lending me the book, my sister raved on about Peter Trachtenberg's chapter, Job, which more than lived up to my expectations as a meditation on the nature of suffering. Samuel, by April Reynolds, strikes at the very heart of what has troubled religion since its very beginning: those who would use it as a means to gather power and glory to themselves. Though perhaps my favorite was Haven Kimmel's Revelation, which suggests, amongst other things, that basically John had gone off of his rocker when he wrote the last book of the Christian Bible. But maybe I'm just still bitter from reading (and discussing. over and over again.) that chapter so many times in Sunday School.
Then intertwined throughout are the tales of the people Manseau and Sharlet meet while driving around America. All of these stories are haunting, each of them moved me. But being a girl from Kansas, and more specifically, a girl who gets homesick when she watches Twister, it's not surprising that my favorite chapter was about storm chasers -- particularly, those who chase the super cells that create tornados. Swoon.
In short, Killing the Buddha is challenging, sickening, uplifting, and magnificent. Read it. Now.