Jeff Sharlet – författare

A startling and immensely pleasurable collection of American writings on belief, from the Civil War to Occupy Wall StreetBeginning with Walt Whitman singing hymns at a wounded soldier’s bedside during the Civil War, this surprising and vivid anthology ranges straight through to the twenty-first century to end with Francine Prose crying tears of complicated joy at the sight of Whitman’s words in Zuccotti Park during the brief days of the Occupy movement. The first anthology of its kind, Radiant Truths gathers an exquisite selection of writings by both well-known and forgotten American authors and thinkers, each engaged in the challenges of writing about religion, of documenting “things unseen.” Their contributions to the genre of literary journalism—the telling of factual stories using the techniques of fiction and poetry—make this volume one of the most exciting anthologies of creative nonfiction to have emerged in years.  Jeff Sharlet presents an evocative selection of writings that illuminate the evolution of the American genre of documentary prose. Each entry may be savored separately, but together the works enrich one another, engaging in an implicit and continuing conversation that reaches across time and generations.Including works by:Walt Whitman  •  Henry David Thoreau  •  Mark Twain  •  Meridel Le Sueur  •  Zora Neale Hurston  •  Mary McCarthy  •  James Baldwin  •  Norman Mailer  •  Ellen Willis  •  Anne Fadiman  •  John Jeremiah Sullivan  •  Francine Prose  •  Garry Wills  •  and many others

In Jeff Sharlet's bestselling book, The Family, he wrote about the 'C Street House,' a Washington, D.C., Christian fellowship home shared by a number of conservative politicians. In the summer of 2009, the house became infamous as the centre of sex scandals involving three of its residents: Senator John Ensign, Governor Mark Sanford, and Congressman Chip Pickering.Sharlet is the leading expert on 'the Family,' and his undercover research and investigative work answers some of the country's biggest questions: how political fundamentalism endures in America; why, despite the collapse of the old Christian Right, it is as big a threat to democracy as ever before; and where, in a time of political upheaval and culture wars, fundamentalist politicians really intend to lead the country

C Street - where piety, politics, and corruption meet Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside the C Street House, the Fellowship residence known simply by its Washington, DC address. The house has lately been the scene of notorious political scandal, but more crucially it is home to efforts to transform the very fabric of American democracy. And now, after laying bare its tenants' past in The Family, Sharlet reports from deep within fundamentalism in today's world, revealing that the previous efforts of religious fundamentalists in America pale in comparison with their long-term ambitions. When Barack Obama entered the White House, headlines declared the age of culture wars over. In C Street, Sharlet shows why these conflicts endure and why they matter now - from the sensationalism of Washington sex scandals to fundamentalism's long shadow in Africa, where Ugandan culture warriors determined to eradicate homosexuality have set genocide on simmer. We've reached a point where piety and corruption are not at odds but one and the same. Reporting with exclusive sources and explosive documents from C Street, the war on gays in Uganda, and the battle for the soul of America's armed forces - waged by a 15,000-strong movement of officers intent on "reclaiming territory for Christ in the military" Sharlet reveals not the last gasp of old-time religion but the new front lines of fundamentalism.

Nominally Christian churches glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while others celebrate an ecstatic indulgence in hate, citing Scripture whilst preparing for civil war. Lonely men gather to rage against women. There, too, in the undertow, the forty-fifth president of the United States, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on 6 January at the US Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.Both political inquiry and meditation, as poetic as it is profound and disturbing, The Undertow captures a decade of growing division in the US: roughly 2011–2021. Jeff Sharlet examines currents of gender, faith and money that brought us to the “Trumpocene,” and finally, explores a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism. Beginning and closing with freedom songs of the past whose critique of American failures are nonetheless a vision of American possibility, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with the present, precarious condition.

Nominally Christian churches glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while others celebrate an ecstatic indulgence in hate, citing Scripture whilst preparing for civil war. Lonely men gather to rage against women. There, too, in the undertow, the forty-fifth president of the United States, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on 6 January at the US Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.Both political inquiry and meditation, as poetic as it is profound and disturbing, The Undertow captures a decade of growing division in the US: roughly 2011–2021. Jeff Sharlet examines currents of gender, faith and money that brought us to the “Trumpocene”, and finally, explores a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism. Beginning and closing with freedom songs of the past whose critique of American failures are nonetheless a vision of American possibility.

Known for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us.This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA’s Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin’s Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips.Early readers have called this book “incantatory,” the voice “prophetic,” in “James Agee’s tradition of looking at the reality of American lives.” Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers—night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins—This Brilliant Darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?