American Angels: Useful Spirits in the Material World. By Peter Gardella. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. x, 285 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-1537-7.)

Abstract

America is awash in a sea of angels. Hallmark figurines, Victoria's Secret models, hundreds of books and movies, and countless other cultural creations all draw on the imagery of angelic creatures. Peter Gardella attempts to make sense of this baffling array in American Angels. To do so, he mines a vast assortment of sources, including elements of popular culture often ignored in studies of religion and history. Gardella's analysis is occasionally meandering, but his thesis is both simple and compelling: in America, angels have ceased to serve as messengers of God and have instead become servants of humanity. Like the angel Clarence from the film It's a Wonderful Life (1946), who “earns his wings” not by conveying God's will, but by helping the human protagonist save a small town from a greedy banker, angels act “as colleagues of humans rather than superior beings” (p. 91). This leitmotif holds Gardella's work together, and, at the end, few readers will doubt that he is right. Whether for assuaging existential crises or for peddling lingerie, angels have indeed been most useful to Americans.