The author did a thorough job of explaining how C.S. Lewis impacted America & many lives through his life & writing. The book has a lot of information & includes footnotes & pictures, which is helpful & interesting. I enjoyed learning mire about Lewis & his impact.

Thank you to Netgalley & the Publisher for thus ARC. All opinions are my own

This is an excellent analysis of C S Lewis's lesser known influence in America. Any Lewis devotee or someone with a more passing interest will find this helpful and a worthy addition to their library. Recommended.

There's been a lot said about Lewis, but it sometimes feels like not enough gets said about one particular question: how did he become (as J.I. Packer put it) American evangelicalism's patron saint? Noll delves into the history and helps us see the surprising way Lewis went from being a niche taste in America to the widely-known author he is today.

The concept of this read was really interesting, and one I'd not really thought about much until I engaged with this book. It is rather niche; as much as I love Lewis, I'd rather engage with him and his books in the long run over revisiting this one; it seemed to assume greater familiarity with Lewis's books than the everyman/layperson might, and often came across as more name-dropping than true engagement with the source material or fellow readers.

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I did not get through this, I'm sorry. My surgery recovery took longer than I thought. I was excited about the book though, and the intro was great.

C.S. Lewis in America by Mark Noll is based on a lecture series at Wheaton College’s Wade Center. I’m grateful to have received a digital ARC to review.

The book is structured in three sections with responses from other academics after each section. Noll carefully works through the responses from different Christian groups in the United States to Lewis’s works, primarily in the 1930s-1940s.

I gained a greater context for America and the American religious culture at the time and how that was connected to the reception Lewis’s works received. It was interesting to read of specific reviewers tracking his works for their denominations and religious publications—how would it be to be described by Lewis himself as one of the few people that understood his work?

As a side note, with NetGalley ARCs you never really know what the format file will look like, and while the footnotes weren’t always in the right place I was excited that it did include all the pictures of the people that Noll was referencing. It definitely made me want to have a hard copy of the book as well. In addition, he includes some of the most influential reviews in full in the appendix, saving you a little bit of time in tracking them down yourself, because you will certainly find yourself wanting to read more of them at the end.

I love that Wheaton hosts this series and makes the content more widely available (last year I was able to read The Wonders of Creation, another book resulting from the event series), and look forward to continuing to learn more about Lewis through their research.

C. S. Lewis in America
Readings and Reception, 1935–1947
by Mark A. Noll
Pub Date 14 Nov 2023
IVP Academic
Christian| History| Religion & Spirituality


C.S Lewis In America was sent to me for review by IVP Academic and Netgalley:


Probably no other literary figure in recent history has changed the American religious landscape as much as C. S. Lewis. It wasn't long before Lewis' novels like The Chronicles of Narnia and apologetic works like Mere Christianity started becoming international bestsellers. But who read his stuff? Did he get a good reception?


In this book by noted historian Mark A. Noll, he explores Lewis' surprising reception among Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, and evangelical readers to see how his early readings shaped his later influence.



Volumes in the Hansen Lectureship Series reflect on the imaginative work and lasting influence of seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy Sayers, J.R.R Tolkien, and Charles Williams.


I give C.S Lewis five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

INCREDIBLE. This book provides excellent context for the work of Lewis. This was well-researched and well-written. I’d highly recommend this book.

A thoughtful and very well researched analysis of Lewis's reception in America, including a wide-ranging exploration of the mid-20th-century American culture into which his works were introduced. An incredibly valuable resource for Lewis scholars and readers. (Fuller review in "Sehnsucht" forthcoming.)

Overall this was a very enjoyable and insightful book. It’s a quick read and provides a fascinating perspective into how Lewis’s books were received in the U.S. at the time of their publication. It is amazing how Lewis was quickly admired and supported by American Christians across different segments of the faith. Whether it be Catholics, mainline or evangelicals, it seems that most everyone was quick to enjoy and commend Lewis. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in Lewis and his impact on the church over the past 80+ years.
I would give this book 5 stars if it weren’t for Karen J. Johnson’s response to the first essay. Noll’s initial essay is about how the Catholic Church in America loved and wrote rave reviews about Lewis’s early works. For some reason, Johnson’s response is a look at race in America at the time of Lewis’s books being published. While it is not a bad essay by any means, I don’t see how it can be regarded as a response to Noll’s essay. Noll doesn’t discuss race in his essay. His essay is about Lewis and the Catholic Church in America. Johnson hardly mentions Lewis or his books at all. The essay simply feels out of place in this book and it left me thoroughly confused. Other than that, I loved nearly everything about this book and have no hesitations in recommending it!

For American fans of C.S. Lewis, Noll’s book describes the arc of acceptance on this side of the Atlantic. Lewis’ books were published in America after success in the United Kingdom. Noll limits his analysis to the critics’ essays on Lewis’ Christian works up to the year of Lewis appeared on Time magazine’s cover. The book first delineates the various American religious and non-religious reviews, and then the author invited others to respond to his analysis from a cultural perspective—more of the societal context of Lewis’ writings and approvals/disapprovals. The others’ responses to Noll’s summaries are illuminating as to what Lewis did not write about or address with regard to cultural concerns. While not dealing with Lewis’ academic treatises, mostly on classical literature, this book is academic in nature. You will not find neat summaries of Lewis’ themes, so it’s hard to discern if the critiques are “spot on” or not.

Many of the American reviews nitpick Lewis’ theological stances, especially in the fictional writings. Where Lewis engaged the populace with analogies and allegories in Pilgrim’s Regress, the Space Trilogy, the Screwtape Letters and the Great Divorce—and much later the Narnian Chronicles—the critics did recognize the impreciseness of storytelling as a hermeneutical device. But some still took Lewis to task even while his popularity grew amongst his academic and theological peers and the American public.

Without any summaries of Lewis’ themes or theological perspectives, the reader of this book is dependent on their own memory of Lewis’ work, rereading them or quickly reviewing other summaries.

Noll does conclude with a perspective on how Lewis’ works might fit into our 21st century, social media saturated culture by trying to answer the question: Do we have the attention span to reason through Lewis’ logical reasons for faith and suggested applications of living it out in today’s world?