Rich prose and complex, challenging speculation of a truly deep thinker who is in love with language. Think Kurt Vonnegut meets Howard Zinn meets G.K. Chesterton meets Howard Thurman. This is a chasmal dive of introspection into the very psyche of how we, as a nation, got here and what exactly we’ve become.“ —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“A teacher in prisons, a believer in music, an entangler of religion and politics, a student of mundane poetry, a proponent of a new seriousness, a garroter of despair, a champion of the Beloved Community—In The Possibility of America, David Dark samples Thomas Pynchon, R.E.M., radical Baptist preacher Will Campbell, and many others, to speak truth and hope to our contemporary barnyard.”—John T. Edge, author of The Potlikker Papers
“The Possibility of America is sharp and merciful in that it doesn't shy away from the type of rigorous honesty and nuanced care that I have come to love and learn from every time David Dark shares his work. It is an honor to watch his conflicts and curiosities bear themselves out on the page.“ —Hanif Aburraquib, author of Go Ahead in the Rain and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“This is a book built on the understanding that there is a civic imagination that imagines us into a better way of being human together. Taking Twitter, literature, poetry, music lyrics, film, television, cartoons and conversations as sacred texts, David Dark looks at the things that are held up by language: power, fear, and hatred. Dark’s work holds the hope that love is a muscle we can exercise in public—and he holds us to account for how we practice.“—Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet and theologian
“If I prayed, I would pray for all the David Darks—all the smart, funny, thoughtful, quirky, tough-minded, well-read, culturally-engaged Christians in America—to arise and speak up. Because I know that the crabbed, mean, unthinking forms of political Christianity that I see portrayed in the media are not the whole story.”—Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland
“This revised edition of The Gospel according to America makes this prescient tome that much more salient. Dark regards America—real and imagined, secular and abidingly faithful, horrible and glorious—with a holistic gaze that holds these truths and contradictions together and examines the culture that comes from it in order to better understand just how we got here.” —Jessica Hopper, author of Night Moves and The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
