Heaven, Lisa Miller
Heaven, Lisa Miller
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Heaven
Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

Author: Lisa Miller

Narrator: Linda Emond

Unabridged: 9 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/23/2010


Synopsis

Eighty percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, but very few of them are able to articulate anything specific about their belief, leaving only questions. Is heaven a real place? Is it a city or a garden or both? Can you keep your body there? If so, can you eat, drink, make love? Are you recognizable as yourself in heaven? Do your relationships continue there? Or is heaven something else? A radical idea? A disembodied, unconscious existence? A sense of progression toward perfect understanding, justice, beauty, truth?

 

Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians and scholars have dissected these questions—and others like them—for thousands of years, yet in today’s world, most people leave them pretty well alone, content to live with a shallow or incomplete sense of what they do believe. Award-winning journalist Lisa Miller dissects these ancient theologies and their different ideas regarding an afterlife by looking at what the beliefs are, how they have impacted one another, and also how they have reacted to the needs and lifestyles of their followers through the ages. By looking at profiles of real people and history, and analyzing conversations with scholars, Heaven forces people to grapple with their beliefs about heaven. It holds up a mirror to allow Americans to gauge how their ideas about heaven measure up to traditional and popular ideas throughout history in an accessible, palatable way.

About Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller is an award-winning journalist in the field of religion. The religion editor at Newsweek, she writes a regular column on the intersection of spirituality, belief, ethics, and politics. Formerly on staff at the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

About Linda Emond

Linda Emond has been nominated for three Tony Awards for her work in Cabaret, Death of a Salesman, and Life x 3. For her work off-Broadway, she is the recipient of a Lucille Lortel Award and an Obie. Television credits include Lodge 49, The Good Wife, Succession, and The Gilded Age. Film credits include Gemini ManThe Big Sick, Across the Universe, and Julie & Julia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will

What is your vision of heaven? (presuming, of course, that you have one) Harps and angels, great swaths of light, one’s ancestors waiting in a reception line? There are plenty of notions from which to cobble together an image. How did the practice of ancestor worship, and its suppression lead to not......more

Goodreads review by Bakari

As you probably could guess, as an atheist I am largely disappointed with Lisa Miller’s Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife. The book was endorsed by the popular atheist author Sam Harris, so I thought I’d give it a read. I thought it would provide a critical analysis of how and why......more

Goodreads review by Lee

I’ve found my soul sister! Meet Lisa Miller, a self-described journalist, religion expert, and professional skeptic. She sometimes wants to believe, but it isn’t in her. She misses her grandparents, and wishes she could picture them contentedly up there in heaven waiting for her, but she just can’t.......more