Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them

This book is written by an academic for an academic audience, but I think it is a rare example of eloquent academic writing that is accessible and at times very touching, weaving in and out between the writer's personal history and more theoretical observations on the place of the people who study religion.

Orsi's book is an interesting intro to some of the issues facing religious studies scholars. It presents the issues of how to study a religious community and what difficulties arise in doing so. For the reader less interested in the academic field of religious studies, there is still a wealth of information on religion in America, especially the history and development of American Catholicism. The book is accessible to a wide audience and is the kind of work that makes for good dicussions with a variety of different types of groups. I will add, however, that for those who are already sufficiently aware of the problems of doing anthropological research on religious communities, it offers little that is new or insightful.