Written by literary critic Harold Bloom, the book maps an eclectic brand of American religiosity which consists of a private encounter with the God within. Other aspects of this post-Christian religion are its attractions to Gnosticism and millennial thinking, its interest in ecstasy and victory, its aversion to creeds, and its criticism of nature, time, and history. Bloom finds these lineaments in the Mormons, the Southern Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalism, and in New Age and African-American spirituality. This is an erudite and creative study of the hothouse of American religion.