After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s

Mr. Wuthnow is a good author, but not a great one. More thorough on his facts and background than most, but almost too easy to read. Last chapter sets up for a sequel, perhaps by someone else.

Robert Wuthnow is the most prolific and most interesting contemporary sociologist of religion, delving again into the ambiguous heart of American spirituality. This study is certainly the most accessible, popular analysis of religious trends since the 1950s, with a startlingly convincing interpretation of how attitudes about religion and spirituality have changed in the post-modern era. Read this and await his next study. Wuthnow's done a great service to our understanding of what sometimes seems to be a most perplexing trend from domestic religion to a kind of amorphous, inauthentic spirituality of seeking.