Recommended on Religion from Outside the Box

Alighieri, D.: Delphi Complete Works of Dante Aleghieri, New York: Delphi, 2013.

Armstrong, K.: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; New York: MJF Books, 1993.

Arterburn, S.; Felton, J.: Toxic Faith: Understanding and Overcoming Religious Addiction, Nashville: Oliver-Nelson, 1991 (one foot in and one foot out of the box).

Assman, J.: Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism; Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1998.

Assman, J.: The Price of Monotheism; Palo Alto, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2009.

Batchelor, S.: Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening; New York: Riverhead / Penguin, 1997.

Batchelor, S.: After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age; New Haven, CT: Yale U. Press, 2015.

Beder, S.: Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR; London: Zed Books, 2001.

Bellah, R. N.: Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditional World; New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Berger, P.: The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion; New York: Doubleday, 1967.

Bergson, H.: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion; Notre Dame, IN: U. Notre Dame Press, (1932) 1977.

Boethius of Rome: Consolation of Philosophy; somewhere in what is now Switzerland or southern Germany: The Holy Roman Church, c. 524.

Bottero, et al.: Ancestor of the West : Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece; Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 2000.

Carpenter, J.: Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism; New York: Oxford U. Press, 1997.

Clarke, J. J.: The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought; London: Routledge, 2000.

Debray, R.: God: An Itinerary; London: Verso, 2004.

Durkhem, E.: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life; London: Allen & Unwin, 1915.

Epstein, M.: Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught; New York: Gotham Books, 2006.

Ehrman, B.: The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Ehrman, B.: Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife ; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

Frankopan, P.: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World; New York: Vintage, 2017.

Fronsdal, G.: The Buddha Before Buddhism; Boulder, CO: Shambala, 2016.

Freud, S.: The Future of an Illusion; orig. pub. 1927, New York: W. W. Norton, 1961.

Freud, S.: Moses & Monotheism; orig. pub. 1939, New York: Penguin, 1955.

Goleman, D.: The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience; New York: Puttnam & Sins, 1988.

Hallman, J.: The Devil is a Gentleman: Exploring America's Religious Fringe; New York: Random House, 2006.

Hervieu-Leger, D.: Religion as a Chain of Memory; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 2000.

Heyrman, C.: Southern Cross; New York: Knopf, 1997.

Hoffer, E.: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements; New York: Harper and Row, 1951, 1966.

James, W.: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902 (far from being out of the box, but the single most significant starting point for the study of "comparative religion").

Jaynes, J.: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976.

Kerouac, J.: Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha; orig. pub. 1956, New York: Viking, 2008.

Kimball, J.: When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs; San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 2002.

Krishnamurti, J.: This Matter of Culture; orig. pub. 1964, London: Victor Gollanz Ltd, 1974.

Krishnamurti, J.: On God, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

Lobdell, W,: Losing My Religion: How I Lost my Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- And Found Unexpected Peace; New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Martin, W.: The Kingdom of the Cults; Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1967, 1977, 1987 (one foot in and one foot out of the box).

McDougall, W.: Promised Land, Crusader State; New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1997.

Meinig, D.: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Vol. 3: Transcontinental America, 1850-1915; New Haven CT: Yale U. Press, 1998.

Meinig, D.: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Volume 4: Global America, 1915–2000 ; New Haven CT: Yale U. Press, 2006.

Michael, T.: The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse; Albany: State U. of NY Press, 2005.

Miles, J.: God, A Biography; New York: Random House 1996.

Miles, J.: Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God; New York: Random House, 2001.

Miller, D.: Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium; Berkeley: U. California Press, 1997.

Miller, D.; Yamamori, T.: Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement, Berkeley CA: U. California Press, 2007.

Miller, R.; Stout, H.; Wilson, C.: Religion and the American Civil War; New York: Oxford U. Press, 1998.

Moore, M.: "Dante's Infernal Crimes Forgiven," in The Daily Telegraph; June 17, 2008. 

Noll, M.: The Old Religion in a New World; Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2002.

Pagels, E.: Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelations; New York: Viking, 2012.

Phillips, K.: The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America; New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Phillips, K.: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religions, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century; New York: Viking, 2006.

Prothero, S.: God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World; New York: Harper Collins, 2010.

Rubenstein, J.: Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse; New York: Perseus - Basic Books, 2011.

Sargant, W.: Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain Washing; orig. pub. 1957, Cambridge, MA: Malor Books, 1997 (includes excellent material on Wesleyan Methodism and the "religion" of Soviet communism).

Setton, K.: The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571, Vol. 1: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; London: Arner Philosophical Society, 1976.

Smith, A.: Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity; New York: Oxford U. Press, 2002.

Smith, H.: The World's Religions: The Revised & Updated Edition of The Religions of Man; orig. pub. 1958, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991 (one foot in and one foot out of the box).

Spong, J. S.: Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile; New York: HarperOne, 1999. (one foot in, for sure, but the other is well out)

Stark, R.; Finke, R.: The Churching of America, 1776-1990; New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 1993.

Strozier, C.; Terman, D.; et al: The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History; London: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Trungpa, C.: The Heart of the Buddha; Boston: Shambala: 1991.

Tuchman, B.: Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour; New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1976.

Watts, A.: The Way of Zen; New York: Random House / Pantheon, 1957.

Watts, A.; Al Chung-liang Huang: Tao: The Watercourse Way; New York: Pantheon, 1975.

Weber, M.: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1930.