| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality. By Leigh Eric Schmidt. (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. xiv, 336 pp. $26.95, ISBN 0-06-054566-6.)
The current fascination with personal spirituality, as opposed to religion based in institutions, compelled the historian Leigh Eric Schmidt to take a sustained look at spiritual quests and journeys in American life. He is well aware that the eclecticism that characterizes much contemporary spirituality, captured in the claim that one is "spiritual but not religious," has had a venerable journey through American religious culture.	1
Many of the usual suspects receive fresh analysis—Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet Walt Whitman, and the early self-help advocate Ralph Waldo Trine. But Schmidt also looks at figures studied less often, such as Sarah Farmer, Thomas Kelley, and Max Ehrmann. Schmidt's thesis is that the liberal metaphysical tradition, from the early nineteenth century forward, provided the framework for a spirituality of seeking that has at least two components: inward searching for wholeness and active engagement with society.	. . .

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