Within a sweeping overview, Williams offers concise descriptions of the background, beliefs, practices, and leaders of America's most influential and distinctive religious movements and denominations, including Judaism, the principal branches of historical Christianity, and important non-Western religious traditions. This thoroughly revised edition of America's Religions is sixty percent larger than the original version, with new chapters on Hispanic and Islamic religions and comprehensive updating throughout. This eminently practical volume allows the reader to approach America's religious history from two directions: as a chronological narrative that entwines the development of religious movements with the economic, political, legal, and social currents of American history, or as a series of discrete topics. Williams provides an extensive bibliography arranged by topic, also updated. Williams shows how individual religious traditions have developed in the context of one another and how each group has come to terms with formative American experiences such as cultural pluralism, independence, war, slavery, the frontier, and urbanization. Maintaining a focus on the process of Americanization, he explores how religion has helped to shape and sustain many distinctive cultures, or subcultures, within the broader American society. Informative and clear, is an essential volume for anyone interested in religion in America.