“A Joyfully Serious Man is a singular book. In Bortolini’s hands, Robert Bellah becomes a prism that filters the light of his time, and sends it back to the reader as a history of American culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. But the book also succeeds as an intimate portrait: we feel we know this man, with all his idiosyncrasies, feelings of emptiness, longings, ambitions, sense of gratitude, enormous curiosity, and brilliant accomplishments.”—Jeffrey C. Alexander, author of What Makes a Social Crisis? The Societalization of Social Problems
“An excellent biography. Bortolini has produced not only a rich and original account of the evolution of Bellah’s thought, but also a picture of Bellah the man, tormented by relentless inner strivings, frustrated desires, and unfathomable loss, all set against the backdrop of the social, cultural, and religious history of his day.”—Neil Gross, author of Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?
“A deeply humane, gracefully written portrayal of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man channels Robert Bellah’s unique voice, offering readers an intimate portrait of his personal and professional journeys, a careful exegesis of his ideas, and a richly textured analysis of the contexts of all three. Bellah could not have found a better biographer. A stunning achievement.”—Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, author of The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History
“This is a splendid book. Rarely have I seen a biography that so adeptly blends personal, intellectual, and social history so flawlessly. Robert Bellah’s contributions to the study of religion were, and remain, revolutionary, and I still find myself using methods and approaches I learned from him. In reading this riveting book, I felt we were back together, and was grateful.”—Harvey Cox, author of The Future of Faith
"Bortolini’s beautifully written biography interweaves the major events of Bellah’s personal life — some in Princeton and some previously undisclosed — with the evolving contours of American individualism, political opportunism, and therapeutic self-obsession that so deeply troubled him."---Robert Wuthnow, Princeton Alumni Weekly
"Bortolini skillfully and compassionately balances the personal, academic, and cultural elements that comprised Bellah’s life, and presents his theories in understandable and accessible terms."---Brian Bromberger, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
"I think that you will relish the encounter that is available here with Bob Bellah. We owe a debt of gratitude to Matteo Bortolini for his wonderful portrait of this joyfully serious man."---Peter Blum, Tradition and Discovery
"A Joyfully Serious Man: The Life of Robert Bellah will be the envy of social scientists and historians who write in the genre of biography, and it will long set the gold-standard for scholarship of this kind."---Charles Camic, The American Sociologist
"On a second outsider puzzle of interest – Bellah as an emblematic case of mid-century American academic – Bortolini is conspicuously successful. Bellah’s life provides an exceedingly well-documented example of a particular generation of social scientists in America: those who were born in the interwar period and educated in the immediate postwar decades; who were wafted by the explosive growth of academia during the period 1945–1970; and who suffered in their academic primes the rapid transformations of America that took place from 1960 to 1980."---Andrew Abbott, The American Sociologist
"Reading Bortolini on how Bellah first formulated, then had to defend, and then finally abandoned civil religion, encouraged me to think more systematically about issues that I find inherent in the public-ness of certain types of ideas generally."---Rhys Williams, The American Sociologist
"One of the richest aspects of Bortolini’s book is the way in which it enables us to see Robert Bellah against the backdrop of his times, to see his intellectual projects and his character shaped by the events and institutions he lived through."---Laura Ford, The American Sociologist
"To my knowledge, very few, if any, sociologists born in the 20th century have so far been the subject of a more documented biography than Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man, which is additional evidence of Bellah’s importance for new generations of sociologists."---Federico Brandmayr, The American Sociologist
"Bortolini, in this outstanding biography, introduces the readers to not only the oeuvre of a distinguished public intellectual, but also to his personhood, which, amidst personal calamity, could still pave a way as a fierce and passionate independent intellectual."---Alisha Saikia, Religious Studies Review
"As Matteo Bortolini’s beautiful biography shows over and over, the importance of intellectual curiosity is the ultimate lesson of Bellah’s life and work."---David Yamane, International Sociology Reviews
"While the book presents a persuasive, if subtle, plea to revive [Bellah’s] hermeneutic insights, another of its many virtues—likely to ruffle far fewer feathers—is that it serves to make vivid what it is about the sociological imagination that makes it so dazzlingly irresistible. For this alone, A Joyfully Serious Man deserves a wide readership."---Galen Watts, Contemporary Sociology
"Matteo Bortolini has made a remarkable contribution to postwar intellectual and social history, using as its prism the trajectory of one scholar to show some of the complex and conflicting tendencies of the time. I believe his book is a resource that any future intellectual or social history of the period would find relevant, and perhaps even indispensable."---Arvind Rajagopal, Civic Sociology
"Bortolini's account of [Bellah's] life is a major achievement for its author, an invaluable companion to Bellah's writings, and indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand Bellah, his thought, and his times."---Chad Alan Goldberg, Sociological Forum
"A helpful and enjoyable biography of the American scholar Robert Bellah."---Evan Kuehn, Reading Religion
"Bortolini's terrific book is likely to be the first one to which scholars turn for a rich examination of Bellah's life for a very long time."---Susan E. Henking, Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences
"Robert Neely Bellah makes an excellent subject for a biography, and Matteo Bortolini has written a fascinating biography of him that illuminates his life, his work, and his times all at once."---Philip Gorski, The Hedgehog Review
"Bortolini weaves the strands together effortlessly. Personal loss, friendship, love, and grief are neither afterthoughts nor drivers of this narrative of a life. Rather we come to appreciate how the life and the mind worked together—sometimes in conflict, sometimes in sync. In a standard intellectual biography, life is often the background for thought. In this book, there is no distinction between them."---Joan Scott, Civic Sociology
"Matteo Bortolini has written the definitive biography of the American sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah."---Chad Alan Goldberg, Civic Sociology
"Bortolini has produced what one imagines will prove to be a matchless achievement."---Bryan S. Turner, Journal of Classical Sociology
"Bortolini's weaving of biography with the interpretation of a lifetime's intellectual labor into a narrative culminates in a picture of Bellah that brings together large‐scale themes with telling detail both familiar and unfamiliar ... [this] terrific book is likely to be the first one to which scholars turn for a rich examination of Bellah's life for a very long time."---Susan E. Henking, Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences
"Winner of the History of Sociology and Social Thought Book Award, American Sociological Association"
