ANNA DELLA SUBIN- Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE
$24.99
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE
A provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age
Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god has haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie, acclaimed as the Living God in Jamaica, to Britain’s Prince Philip, who became the unlikely center of a new religion on a South Pacific Island, men made divine―always men―have appeared on every continent. And because these deifications always emerge at moments of turbulence―civil wars, imperial conquest, revolutions―they have much to teach us.