- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (Mar 31 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805086528
- ISBN-13: 978-0805086522
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.7 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #374,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“An entertaining… affecting inquiry into man’s yearning for spiritual transcendence.”—The New York Times Book Review
"A globe-traveling tale of the one thing all humanity shares: the body."—USA Today
“Reveal[s] the enduring power of faith, regardless of ideology, and the obsessive nature of religious belief -- which, as this entertaining book amply proves, is all too capable of taking peculiar turns.”—Los Angeles Times
“Manseau … lavishly scatters gems … as he travels the world in search of the bones, teeth, hair and other scraps from the religiously renowned…. A lively lope among fragments from famous faith figures.”—Publishers Weekly
“Adroit, worldly … Transports readers around the globe to check out places accessible and remote where fabric, wood, sinew and other materials are venerated…. An amusing romp.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Talk about a long, strange trip…. There's proper respect for believers and a nod and a wink for the others.”—Billy Heller, The New York Post
"Manseau brings the same expansive perspective on belief to "Rag and Bone" that fueled his ... memoir, "Vows" -- the understanding that every leap of faith can benefit from a little push." —Washington Post
“A beautiful, and at times very funny and insightful journey of faith, culture, religious history, and exotic locales…. A truly great book.”—Sacramento Book Review
"Manseau’s unerring eye for detail makes for a fascinating travelogue. But Rag and Bone is more than that. Drawing on history, spiritual traditions, legend and contemporary reports, this book is a totally exuberant compendium of human beliefs, certain to satisfy devotees of all stripes."—Barnes & Noble Review
“A thoughtful invitation to explore locations, myths, legends, and truths of relics…. In Rag and Bone, Manseau brings bare bones to life, and he has composed an intriguing … travelogue that takes the reader around the world, exploring truth and legend, but more importantly on a journey of understanding why they matter.”—Beliefnet
“Dry bones dance in Rag and Bone, as Peter Manseau brings death to life through his fascinating exploration of religious relics: the skull fragments, detached digits, and ashes of the holy. This is a book that might have been written in the 15th century just as easily as now, but we're lucky to have here the unique 21st century voice of Manseau--a Yiddish-speaking, Buddha-curious son of a Catholic priest and a nun--and one of the most peculiar and most entertaining travelogues in years.”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
“Peter Manseau’s Rag and Bone reads like a novel, entertains like a television docudrama, and educates like the best college professor you ever had. It is at once informative, quirky, and funny. Do people really think that the leathery tongue of a 12th century saint can bless them with good fortune? They do. Why do people believe in such weird things as the holy relics of religion? Read this book to find out. WARNING: you may very well discover that you also hold beliefs in holy relics and not even know it!”—Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, author of Why People Believe Weird Things and Why Darwin Matters
“A text for the devoted and devoutly lapsed, Rag and Bone is part religious study and part travelogue. Peter Manseau proves a reliable guide, getting both the concepts and the corpses right: the idea of the thing, and the thing itself. And how far afield his curiosities take us – fellow pilgrims one and all – for whom the dead may be more than the sum of parts.”—Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
“The dead may tell no tales, but the relics they leave behind do, if only we will listen to what they have to say. Happily, one of America’s best young writers has his ear to the ground at reliquaries from San Francisco to Sri Lanka. The result is an intriguing tour of the world’s most holy hairs, hearts, and hands that refuses to lapse into the sort of confessional cant that deadens much writing on religion today. Rag and Bone is alive with both humorous and heartbreaking observations about the chicanery and mystery of things seen and unseen.”—Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University and author of the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy
“A dead saint’s bones, an ancient prophet’s whisker, the Buddha's tooth: As Peter Manseau traces the trail of religious relics, he merges the holy and the human with keen insight. The language shines and the humor delights, but even more, we come away having learned something profound about the making of religious meaning.”—Barbara J. King, author of Evolving God
"A globe-traveling tale of the one thing all humanity shares: the body."—USA Today
“Reveal[s] the enduring power of faith, regardless of ideology, and the obsessive nature of religious belief -- which, as this entertaining book amply proves, is all too capable of taking peculiar turns.”—Los Angeles Times
“Manseau … lavishly scatters gems … as he travels the world in search of the bones, teeth, hair and other scraps from the religiously renowned…. A lively lope among fragments from famous faith figures.”—Publishers Weekly
“Adroit, worldly … Transports readers around the globe to check out places accessible and remote where fabric, wood, sinew and other materials are venerated…. An amusing romp.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Talk about a long, strange trip…. There's proper respect for believers and a nod and a wink for the others.”—Billy Heller, The New York Post
"Manseau brings the same expansive perspective on belief to "Rag and Bone" that fueled his ... memoir, "Vows" -- the understanding that every leap of faith can benefit from a little push." —Washington Post
“A beautiful, and at times very funny and insightful journey of faith, culture, religious history, and exotic locales…. A truly great book.”—Sacramento Book Review
"Manseau’s unerring eye for detail makes for a fascinating travelogue. But Rag and Bone is more than that. Drawing on history, spiritual traditions, legend and contemporary reports, this book is a totally exuberant compendium of human beliefs, certain to satisfy devotees of all stripes."—Barnes & Noble Review
“A thoughtful invitation to explore locations, myths, legends, and truths of relics…. In Rag and Bone, Manseau brings bare bones to life, and he has composed an intriguing … travelogue that takes the reader around the world, exploring truth and legend, but more importantly on a journey of understanding why they matter.”—Beliefnet
“Dry bones dance in Rag and Bone, as Peter Manseau brings death to life through his fascinating exploration of religious relics: the skull fragments, detached digits, and ashes of the holy. This is a book that might have been written in the 15th century just as easily as now, but we're lucky to have here the unique 21st century voice of Manseau--a Yiddish-speaking, Buddha-curious son of a Catholic priest and a nun--and one of the most peculiar and most entertaining travelogues in years.”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
“Peter Manseau’s Rag and Bone reads like a novel, entertains like a television docudrama, and educates like the best college professor you ever had. It is at once informative, quirky, and funny. Do people really think that the leathery tongue of a 12th century saint can bless them with good fortune? They do. Why do people believe in such weird things as the holy relics of religion? Read this book to find out. WARNING: you may very well discover that you also hold beliefs in holy relics and not even know it!”—Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, author of Why People Believe Weird Things and Why Darwin Matters
“A text for the devoted and devoutly lapsed, Rag and Bone is part religious study and part travelogue. Peter Manseau proves a reliable guide, getting both the concepts and the corpses right: the idea of the thing, and the thing itself. And how far afield his curiosities take us – fellow pilgrims one and all – for whom the dead may be more than the sum of parts.”—Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
“The dead may tell no tales, but the relics they leave behind do, if only we will listen to what they have to say. Happily, one of America’s best young writers has his ear to the ground at reliquaries from San Francisco to Sri Lanka. The result is an intriguing tour of the world’s most holy hairs, hearts, and hands that refuses to lapse into the sort of confessional cant that deadens much writing on religion today. Rag and Bone is alive with both humorous and heartbreaking observations about the chicanery and mystery of things seen and unseen.”—Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University and author of the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy
“A dead saint’s bones, an ancient prophet’s whisker, the Buddha's tooth: As Peter Manseau traces the trail of religious relics, he merges the holy and the human with keen insight. The language shines and the humor delights, but even more, we come away having learned something profound about the making of religious meaning.”—Barbara J. King, author of Evolving God
Product Description
A fascinating, intelligent, and sometimes funny tour of the human relics at the root of the world’s major religions
By examining relics—the bits and pieces of long-dead saints at the heart of nearly all religious traditions—Peter Manseau delivers a book about life, and about faith and how it is sustained. The result of wide travel and the author’s own deep curiosity, filled with true tales of the living and dubious legends of the dead, Rag and Bone tells of a California seeker who ended up in a Jerusalem convent because of a nun’s disembodied hand; a French forensics expert who travels on the metro with the rib of a saint; two young brothers who collect tickets at a Syrian mosque, studying English beside a hair from the Prophet Muhammad’s beard; and many other stories, myths, and peculiar histories.
With these, and an array of other digits, limbs, and bones, Manseau provides a respectful, witty, informed, inquisitive, thoughtful, and fascinating look into the "primordial strangeness that is at the heart of belief," and the place where the abstractions of faith meet the realities of physical objects, of rags and bones.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual and Fascinating,
By
This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Paperback)
This book was written as a memoir of the authors travels in search of holy relics, i.e., bits and pieces of the bodies of long-deceased people who are now venerated as holy in some way. The religious icons discussed span a variety of religious beliefs: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. In each case, the author briefly discusses a small part of the life of the long-departed individual and the reasons for their alleged sainthood. He then discusses the associated relics: their histories, their authenticities (or possible lack thereof), their current locations, their supposed powers, their veneration and any political/religious turmoil connected with them. The writing style is really that of a travelogue, complete with various digressions that are not directly related to the book's main theme. The prose is friendly, often tongue-in-cheek, generally lively and widely accessible; it is not meant to be pious, but rather historically objective. In some occasions, the author's choice of words in describing a relic and its history, etc., is simply priceless in the amusing sense. This is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter what their religious beliefs, if any. History buffs - especially those interested in religious history - should be in for a treat.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews) 17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
the facsinating role of relics in the world today,
By David Swanson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Hardcover)
There are at least three good reasons to read Peter Manseau's latest book, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead. The most quickly apparent reason is the way Manseau writes. Disguised as a travelogue, Rag and Bone is actually a history of the role relics play in the world's religions. Of the few remains of Joan of Arc Manseau writes,"The bits and pieces that may have once belonged to the Maid of Orleans, the most popular saint the church ever killed, have been placed inside three glass jars, slid into cloth cozies, and arranged within a pale wooden case the size of a toolbox... First on the the RER commuter train, then the metro, she rides up out of the darkness like a body exhumed, despite the unfortunate fact that she never had a grave to begin with." Manseau strikes the delicate balance of humor and awe through the book's eight chapters. While not overlooking the odd moments that are bound to take place while traveling the world to view pieces of dead people, the author is careful to treat the relics and those who venerate them with deference and admiration. The stories that emerge when the reporter's search intersects with those who see something transcendent in old bones and bits of skin is the second reason Rag and Bone is so enjoyable. The best travelogues entertain even while showing the reader fascinating scenes and unknown histories; both are abundant in these pages. Manseau mixes his own adventures of traveling to places like Jerusalem and Syria with the stories of the once living saints whose bodies- or what's left of them- continue to influence the faithful. There's another reason I so thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I'm not sure the author intended this reaction. Rag and Bone repeatedly shows the human desire for a physical connection with the spiritual world. Officially, many of the world's religions are rather ambivalent- or outright hostile- towards relics and the veneration that often follows. This hasn't stopped believers all around the world from making pilgrimages to see bits of bone, tooth, hair and (yes, it's true) foreskin. While modern religion is often portrayed in otherworldly terms, Manseau compellingly portrays the human need for a tangible connection with the divine. In the midst of it's adventure, history, and humor there is plenty to ponder in Rag and Bone for those who share my Christian belief. Historic Christianity affirms the physical-ness of creation and humanity and looks to a final restoration of all things that is not less but more physical than what we now experience. Unfortunately Christianity has often moved in more gnostic directions where the body and the world is seen as a temporary existence from which we will one day escape. Within this dualistic worldview it makes sense that believers would grasp at relics as material connections to the out-of-reach spiritual world. A more traditional understanding of Christianity looks not to jars of bones for this connection but to people (the image-bearers of God) and the creation (a reflection of the character and creativity of God). The Christian is directed to God by the living creations of God. We are encouraged to worship as we encounter the beautiful and complex results of God's creative work. Whether or not a reader finds this type of insight in its pages, Rag and Bone is an enjoyable read- as entertaining as it is informative. 6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lively Stories of the Dead,
By R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Hardcover)
We take it for granted that people will revere their dead, memorializing or sentimentalizing them. We might view as old-fashioned the practice of keeping a lock of the dear departed's hair, but there is nothing too strange in that. But what if the keepsake was the dear departed's tongue? Veneration for body parts has a long history. "Whether a tooth, a heart, a whisker, or a calcified tear, these items have exerted a remarkable and complicated influence in the world for such tiny, often frankly repulsive, things." So writes Peter Manseau in _Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead_ (Henry Holt), a strange, reflective, and amusing tale of a very weird but universal practice. Manseau has traveled all over the world to peep at some of these objects, the ways they are put on display, their influence, and the people who adore them. Manseau is a writer on religion and other subjects, and throughout brings a humorous but always sympathetic view to relics and believers, and his insights into human nature through this peculiar subject are always interesting and sometimes profound.He starts in Goa, for a look at the corpse of St. Francis Xavier. Francis stayed whole and undecayed until his return to Goa, where he was put on display and in 1554 a "pious Portuguese woman" was so filled with religious fervor before the relic that she not only kissed his toe but bit it off. That was a spontaneous removal, but in 1614 his right lower arm was cut off, split, and sent to Italy and Belgium to benefit Jesuits there; then later Jesuits in Japan got the rest of the arm, and then a shoulder blade went... well, you get the picture. One of the best parts of Manseau's book is that it does not restrict itself to the veneration of bones that is a familiar part of Catholic tradition, but shows relics in other religions as well. There are, for instance, relics in Islam, but they point out a very basic divide in the great Shia and Sunni branches. Shiites are inspired by relics and Sunnis are disgusted by them. From the beard of the Prophet himself has come (as one chapter here is titled) "The Most Dangerous Whisker in the World". Then there is the Buddha's tooth, which resides, naturally, at the Temple of the Holy Tooth in a Sri Lankan hill town. The most peculiar stories here have to do with the foreskin (or foreskins) of Jesus. All of him went to heaven, believers say, but the fruit of his circumcision had to be left behind on Earth somewhere. There used to be a dozen of these prepuces circulating around all over Europe. There are still bits of it about, but the place most accepted as the site of the true foreskin is Calcata, Italy, although the Catholic Church dismisses it as an "irreverent curiosity." This is perhaps a better designation than that given by a seventeenth-century Vatican librarian, who determined that the prepuce had indeed left Earth along with Jesus, and expanded and stopped at Saturn, where it became the planet's recently-discovered ring. The Catholic Church has a designation for the offense of buying and selling sacred objects: simony. But there is a loophole: such objects can be donated, and donations can be accepted in return. This points out that relics are big business, like the touring Buddha relics which bring in dollars that are to go to an enormous statue of the Buddha, twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. It also explains some of the thefts that have gone on for centuries, first by the Crusaders and then by monks of one church stealing from another in what seems like a great sport played from one era to the next. Of course, it isn't all about money, and as Manseau points out in this delightful collection of travel stories with a purpose, it isn't even always about faith. George Washington's hair can be found in many collections, as can fabric that soaked up Abe Lincoln's blood. And then there is the museum in Georgia that enshrines a finding from deep in the shag carpet of the Jungle Room in Graceland, and exhibits it as "Possibly Elvis's Toenail." 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, educational lighter read,
By Bluestalking Reader "Bluestalking Reader" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Hardcover)
Exactly the book I hoped it would be, at exactly the right time. I was looking for a well-written, somewhat humorous travel memoir with a more literary bent. So much of what I've been reading lately has been so heavy, and I needed a short break from that. Manseau's book fit the bill perfectly.The subject of religious relics is probably covered in more depth elsewhere, in a nonfiction book that perhaps goes into more detail. But that's not the book I wanted to read. Manseau's less-structured romp through the world of relics, and light foray into what makes them important to some, was appealingly sweet and informative enough it satisifed my need to know just the surface facts. Indeed, at times his musings were more deep than others, and I enjoyed that as well. For me, it was just the right book for the point I'm at in my reading. |
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