From the renowned historian, biographer, and novelist A. N. Wilson comes a literary, historical, and deeply personal exploration of the Bible.In The Book of the People, A. N. Wilson explores how readers and thinkers have approached the Bible, and how it may be read today. Charting his own relationship with the Bible over a lifetime of writing, Wilson argues that it remains relevant, even in a largely secular society, as a philosophical treatise, a work of literature, and a cultural touchstone that the Western world has an-swered to for nearly two thousand years. Martin Luther King was "reading the Bible" when he started the civil rights movement; when Michelangelo painted the fresco cycles in the Sistine Chapel, he too was "reading the Bible." Wilson challenges the way fundamentalists--whether believers or nonbelievers--have misused the Bible, either by neglecting its spiritual importance and failing to recognize its cultural significance or by using it as a weapon against those with whom they disagree. Erudite, witty, and accessible, The Book of the People seeks to reclaim the Good Book as our seminal work of literature and a vital work for the imagination.