num_pages: 640
description: Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared—a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards’s life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwards’s life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture.Meticulously researched and beautifully composed, this biography offers a compelling portrait of an eminent American.
language: English
title: Jonathan Edwards
titlecomplete: Jonathan Edwards
characters: Jonathan Edwards
genres: Religion, Theology, Biography, Christian, Church History, American History, Nonfiction, History, Christianity, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 2064
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Bancroft Prize, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Biography, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Merle Curti Award
category: Intellectual History, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: John C. Pollock Award
category: Christian Biography, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Grawemeyer Award
category: Religion
publisher: Yale University Press