James McBride’s set-up is not unlike Richard Russo’s in his recent Somebody’s Fool, although the writing style and plot lines are very different. Both create a world of overlapping characters, focusing in on each and then focusing out again to define how they fit into a broader world. McBride’s goal is to illuminate the comradeship and sometimes, the distrust, of people who have been exclude from the Land of Liberty. In doing so, he shines a harsh light on racial, religious and social identity. You can safely read this book, no matter what your prejudices may be. This is not a politically biased book, it is history, factual, with names, locations, dudes, and their doings. No refuting the facts. It covers the whole wide-world, in their main scenarios, the main characters of the farce, their stories, their origin and their outcome. It is history from the street level. There's more action here than in all Tom Cruise's movies, and nothing is fake. The suffering siant may be assaulted, but not vanquished; he may be troubled, but can never be conquered; he may lose his head, but he cannot lose his crown, which the righteous Lord hath prepared and laid up for him.....The Lord causes His goodness to pass before His people, and His face to shine upon His people in times of suffering.....for the praise of His own grace, and for the glory of His own name." (69) I listened to the audiobook version which is narrated by the incredible Dominic Hoffman (who previously narrateded Deacon King Kong, Homegoing, The Starless Sea). If you decide to give The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store a try, I highly recommend this format. First of all, I loved Deacon King Kong:it was a lyrical,heartwarming, sad and tight story, with wonderful characters and one of the best love stories I´ve ever read. I wanted to read more McBride, and I´ve been consistently disappointed.

Although it was an excellent outcome, it was not the end of the story. After a hiatus of a couple of decades, new voices emerged, proposing to try it all over again. Innocent of all that had come before, they wanted to revive socialism. The explicit religious roots of socialism also led to the zeal with which socialists embarked upon grand visions, and ominously, their willingness to justify and embrace top-down, centralized methods as not just the means but the ends; radical schemes of re-education and the state supplanting of parental responsibility in the name of making the “new man;” and even the use and endorsement of violence, revolution, and racism/nationalism, particularly embodied in the socialism of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Musical counterpoints perhaps? McBride is himself a musician and musical historian, and music plays a prominent role in the book, so the conceit is not impossible. And, no one, it turns out, is better at managing the two than the Prophet himself, now – once the Jews betray him – changing the direction of prayer away from Jerusalem to the pagan temple of the Ka'bah at Mecca, now producing a swift revelation to protect the honour of his young wife, Aisha.Mr. Muravchik explains in the epilogue the only case of a successful socialist community, the kibbutzim in Israel. Successful yes, but only for a generation or two. What happened? It is beautifully illustrated, with a helpful ground plan at the beginning of each chapter. The premise is that Europe’s great cathedrals tell the story of Christianity. Specifically, in her introduction, Wells argues that “these great multifaceted buildings were attempts to make the spiritual concrete”, and “represent symbolic voyages between this world and the next”. Where Heaven and Earth are there must surely be Hell (Pennhurst State School and Hospital in this case, a historically real and infernal place finally shut down in the late '80s)

Once upon a time, humanity was on a quest for a utopian society. They wanted a world where everyone lived in abundance without needing religion. The answer to their search came from socialism, a science-based doctrine. It promised to create societies of abundance and give birth to the "New Man." At some point, the author starts lecturing readers (something I can´t stand);how can the death scene of one of the best characters ,which could-should- have been poignant,morph into a diatribe against cell phones,decades into the future??? For instance, in the 2nd chapter of the communist manifesto, Marx goes into detail about his theory and its perspective on property. He says that he isn't against private property and its ownership generally, but that his theory is specifically against *bourgeois* property. This motivated Lenin's entire concept of property right in the soviet union. None of this is explained in this book, and that's a mistake. The descriptions of the day are spot-on. That, unfortunately, is to say that the racism, discrimination, and violence of 1930s America experienced by the nation’s undermined populations is terribly clear. Anyone with a sense of history will have seen this coming, but witnessing the characters living poverty and fear will still cause sadness and heartbreak. Socialism continued to be pursued for two centuries, despite wishful thinking and bitter disappointment. Finally, in a dramatic fin de siècle, socialism imploded, with falling walls and collapsing regimes.I had to have a God—and I did find him, after a long search, after a terrible fight—in my own heart.” The God he found was communism. In a catechism composed in 1846, Hess contrasted his new faith with the one that prevailed in the society around him. Whereas Christians invest their hopes “in the image of heavenly joy….We, on the other hand, want this heaven on earth.” (353) The first 4-5 chapters in the book are fantastic. The chapter on Marx and Engels is one that I'll definitely re-read in the future since it was such a thorough account of these two. Also the later sections of the book (while it has issues that I outline below) is important to understand if you want to make sense of what China and Russia are up to today. Another interesting fact that I noticed was that many of the big thinkers of socialism were not "of the people" or the proletariat. They had no real connection with the people who they said they were trying to help. Many were not works or had not worked for very long in their life. They more often belonged to the class of the bourgeoisie than the proletariat and were often frustrated with the proletariats for not seeing their vision as clearly as they did. The proletariats they noticed were only interested in socialism during periods of social unrest which could lead to revolutions and the overthrows of government.