A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands

Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles With God (Restless Books, 2026) collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited change and continue to influence a growing nation. In this anthology, you will find the stories, poems, letters, speeches, sermons, essays, song lyrics, comic strips, newspaper columns, and commentaries that have awoken new generations to free religious thought, from the precolonial to the present day.

A landmark collection of the philosophers and firebrands that sparked a country’s journey through divinity—praising, challenging, and redefining the sacred.

Guest: Ilan Stavans is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. His work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast “In Contrast.”

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler holds a Ph.D. in history, which she uses to explore which stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast and newsletter. She works as a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.

Listeners may also be interested in:

• What Do You Want Out Of Life?
• How To Human
• The Good-Enough Life
• Make A Meaningful Life
• Meditation for Beginners
• Try To Love The Questions
• Gay on God's Campus
• Womanist Bioethics
• Fierce
• Preparing for War

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 325+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.