In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford reveals how religion in all its manifestations has been at the heart of the nation’s deepest divides and its moments of transcendent unity. The history she unfurls is not bound by the walls of temples, synagogues, mosques, and churches. There is Anne Hutchinson, preaching in her parlor in defiance of colonial Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise shocking his kosher guests at an 1883 banquet by serving soft-shell crab; Wovoka, the Paiute man from whose prophecy emerges the Ghost Dance movement; and the Chinese immigrants whose pantheon of Daoist gods offered protection over their backbreaking work constructing the transcontinental railroad.