In the popular immersion journalism tradition of The Year of Living Biblically, a college sophomore spends a semester investigating Liberty University, the Reverend Jerry Falwell's "Bible boot camp."

Like most college students, Kevin Roose was eager for a semester abroad. Four months in Barcelona perhaps? Paris? Athens? No. He headed for the most foreign place he could imagine-and ended up right in America's backyard: Liberty University, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell's "Bible boot camp" version of West Point, where he spent a semester among a coalition of hardcore evangelical Christians. Liberty's 10,000 undergraduates learn everything through a strict lens of Biblical literalism, and Roose dutifully followed the student code of conduct with its host of rules and regulations (i.e., no witchcraft allowed, period), even traveling by bus over spring break to Daytona Beach to "convert the heathens." But he didn't attend Liberty University to poke fun at the students, rather he went to get a better understanding of people who are so similar and yet so different from him. What begins as a journey of discovery into what is actually going on at the nation's largest Christian fundamentalist university ends up revealing more about Roose than he could ever have imagined.

As evidenced by The Year of Living Biblically (Simon & Schuster, 10/07), God Is Not Great (Twelve, 0-446-57980-7, 5/07), and The God Delusion (Houghton MIffl in, 9/06), religion is still a hot-button topic that appeals to book buyers. THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE combines this nationwide interest with a true, funny narrative story that reveals what is really happening at the country's largest Christian fundamentalist training ground. Completely by chance, Kevin Roose got the fi nal interview with
the late Reverend Jerry Falwell for the Liberty University school
newspaper. The author is a 19-year-old sophomore at Brown University studying
English Literature. A veteran humorist for the Brown Daily Herald, his
work has appeared in Esquire. Roose is the protege of New York Times bestselling author A. J. Jacobs and is featured in Jacobs' latest New York Times bestseller, The Year of Living Biblically.