Set in Stone

The Ten Commandments need no introduction. In fact, we probably think we know all there is to know about these divine dos and don'ts. But as this imaginative and vivid account reveals, there is a lot more to this ancient biblical code than Moses and Mount Sinai. Situating the Ten Commandments within the context of modern America, prominent historian and engaging story-teller Jenna Weissman Joselit takes the reader from Indian burial mounds in 19th-century Ohio to thesand dunes of 1920s California and into the civic squares of the 1950s to reveal the centrality of the Ten Commandments to the nation's identity.Rich in incident and story and inhabited by a lively cast of characters whose ranks include forgers and filmmakers, architects and archaeologists, ordinary citizens and politicians, this book compels us to take another look at the Ten Commandments and see them afresh. Through a series of deftly-rendered vignettes, this compelling account recasts the cultural impact of the Ten Commandments in American society not as a legal code or theological imperative, but as a physical, material, and visualphenomenon. We come away with the understanding that they are not cast in stone but a fertile repository of American history.

Joselit's style and prose are accessible and engaging, especially for popular audiences and undergraduate classrooms ... [this book is] notable for bridging the wide gap between academic and general audiences, and it is exemplary in its attempt to tell a series of "tautly told tales" in which physical manifestations of the Ten Commandments provoked immense discussion and controversy., Joselit's expertise in history, Jewish studies, and material culture shines in this accessible text, which will be a valuable resource for students of religious studies, American studies, and history...Highly recommended., Set in Stone is a fascinating tour of forgotten moments in American religious history. Through lively writing and illuminating research, Jenna Weissman Joselit has unearthed the astonishing story of the many times Americans have rediscovered the Ten Commandments and made them their own. With fights over public monuments to these biblical rules still making news, it's never been more important to understand where the nation's volatile religious symbols came from, and what's at stake in our disagreements over where they belong., In this beautifully researched book, historian Jenna Weissman Joselit celebrates the presence and significance of the Ten Commandments in the American experience. She offers a fascinating tour of the delightful variety of ways in which that ancient code is woven into the ordinary fabric of American life and how its meaning has informed the deepest expressions of the American creed. Surely a 'Thou Shalt Read.', The Ten Commandments have been deeply chiseled into the American religious imagination. With vibrant prose and wry observation, Jenna Weissman Joselit explores the nation's long-running captivation with the Decalogue - in everything from archaeological relics to Hollywood spectacles to municipal monuments to self-help regimens to synagogue renderings. Set in Stone is a materially rich history of a canonical cultural preoccupation.

Jenna Weissman Joselit is the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at the George Washington University. She is the author of several books on American daily life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including The Wonders of America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award in History, and A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America.