Carl Gregg

As part of my own reflection on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I agreed to review a new anthology published yesterday: A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands, edited by Ilan Stavans, professor of humanities at Amherst College. Importantly, this book “does not ask whether God exists.

Whenever I am reading a book or listening to an argument, I always pay attention to superlatives — moments when an author moves beyond merely saying something matters and instead argues that it matters most. A superlative is language pushed to its highest degree: not just important, but the most important. Such claims are always worth examining carefully, because they reveal what an author believes deserves our deepest attention, concern, and moral energy.

I’m invited to review far more books than I realistically have time to read and write about. But when I was asked if I was interested in receiving a review copy of Andrew Holocek’s new book, I immediately said yes. I first encountered Holocek’s work nearly six years ago through Dreams of Light: The Profound Daytime Practice of Lucid Dreaming.