“What if the history of religion in the United States was primarily understood not through piety or respectability but through desire and delight? That is the wager of this startling book by one of the greatest interpreters of American religion. The pursuit of happiness has never been more sensual, mischievous, or weird.”

Kathryn Lofton, Yale University

“The Delight Makers has all the makings of a classic: richly researched, theoretically original, never jargony, often funny, intellectually adventurous, ontologically sympathetic, keenly aware of our present academic context and its moral concerns, and, in the end, responsive to all. I set the book down in a mood I much expected: admiration, perhaps even delight.”

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University

“Here the affections of Jonathan Edwards’s theology, the delights of Emerson’s nature, and the aspirations of William James’s religious psychology commingle with the visions of clairvoyants, the allures of occultists, and the copious promises of mind-cure proponents. The Delight Makers is an expansive and magnetic history of an American cosmology in which longings for beauty, vitality, happiness, and abundance have proven endlessly energizing.”

Leigh Eric Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis