The United States is Israel's closest ally in the world. The fact is undeniable, and undeniably controversial, not least because it so often inspires conspiracy theorizing among those who refuse to believe that the special relationship serves America's strategic interests or places the United States on the right side of Israel's enduring conflict with the Palestinians. Some point to the nefarious influence of a powerful "Israel lobby" within the halls of Congress. Others detect the hand of evangelical Protestants who fervently support Israel for their own theological reasons. The underlying assumption of all such accounts is that America's support for Israel must flow from a mixture of collusion, manipulation, and ideologically driven foolishness. Samuel Goldman proposes another explanation. The political culture of the United States, he argues, has been marked from the very beginning by a Christian theology that views the American nation as deeply implicated in the historical fate of biblical Israel. God's Country is the first book to tell the complete story of Christian Zionism in American political and religious thought from the Puritans to 9/11. It identifies three sources of American Christian support for a Jewish state: covenant, or the idea of an ongoing relationship between God and the Jewish people; prophecy, or biblical predictions of return to The Promised Land; and cultural affinity, based on shared values and similar institutions. Combining original research with insights from the work of historians of American religion, Goldman crafts a provocative narrative that chronicles Americans' attachment to the State of Israel.

The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. It's 1871, and he's lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba.

While many studies of religion in the West have focused on the region's diversity, freedom, and individualism, Todd M. Kerstetter brings together the three most glaring exceptions to those rules to explore the boundaries of tolerance as enforced by society and the U.S. government.God's Country, Uncle Sam's Landanalyzes Mormon history from the Utah Expedition and Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 through subsequent decades of federal legislative and judicial actions aimed at ending polygamy and limiting church power. It also focuses on the Lakota Ghost Dancers and the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota (1890), and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas (1993). In sharp contrast to the mythic image of the West as the "Land of the Free," these three tragic episodes reveal the West as a cultural battleground--in the words of one reporter, "a collision of guns, God, and government." Kerstetter asks important questions about what happens when groups with a deep trust in their differing inner truths meet, and he exposes the religious motivations behind government policies that worked to alter Mormonism and extinguish Native American beliefs.

This exciting, highly theatrical docu-drama is about the growing white supremacist movement in America, those dedicated to violent revolution and the expulsion from "God's Country" of non Aryans. The play covers all of the right wing lunatic fringe while focusing on three narrative spines: the trial in Seattle of a paramilitary group which calls itself The Order; the career and death of Denver's Allan Berg, the outspoken, controversial, Jewish talk radio personality "assassinated" by The Order; and, finally, the hate filled career and death of The Order's founder, Robert Matthews. These narratives are skillfully interwoven, sometimes non chronologically, with statistics and facts into a kaleidoscopic and highly theatrical vision.

Though much has been written about the political implications of the religious revival which has engulfed America in recent years, a question remains unanswered: what pushes its people into 'declaring for Jesus'? Douglas Kennedy spent a long hot summer cruising through that expanse of the American South known as 'The Bible Belt' exploring that question. In a remarkable journey into one of the strangest corners of the United States, Kennedy finds himself spending time in Miami with a one-time member of the Mafia turned charismatic preacher, discovering Christian heavy metal music in Nashville, and visiting Death Row in South Carolina with an evangelist who ministers to the condemned. Repeatedly discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, IN GOD'S COUNTRY is a profound, yet brilliantly entertaining exploration of life in late twentieth century America.

SOUTHERN BASTARDS meets American Gods in a high-stakes fantasy series that masterfully blends high-octane action and jaw-dropping worldbuilding. In GOD COUNTRY, readers meet Emmett Quinlan, an old widower rattled by dementia. Emmett isn't just a problem for his children„his violent outbursts are more than the local cops can handle. When a tornado levels his home„as well as the surrounding West Texas town„a restored Quinlan rises from the wreckage. An enchanted sword at the eye of the storm gives him more than a sound mind and body, however. He's now the only man who can face these otherworldly creatures the sword has drawn down to the Lone Star Stateƒ In GOD COUNTRY, salvation is a double-edged sword. ñSo much fun to watch creators find that next level. Go, Cates, go!î„BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS Collects GOD COUNTRY #1-6