Published in 1973....it won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. I read this book in 1981....and was so taken by it that I tore the paperback in half so that I could carry part of around with me to read when I had the opportunity. Ernest Becker was the author and the title....The Denial Of Death. I first mentioned it in these posts in 2009....and posted this paragraph in May of 2021...
"Ernest Becker....[is].....described in bios as a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary thinker. I mostly shoveled coal and turned valves.....but the book fascinated me as I remember tearing the paperback in half so it would fit in my back pocket. The basic message was that man has to find a way to deal with death....so he constructs theories to justify his existence. Beck died at 49 years of age....only months before his book was awarded the Pulitzer. Bill Clinton claimed that it was one of his favorite books....and Woody Allen's character of Alvy Singer mentioned it to Annie Hall in the Academy Award winning Best Picture of the same name."I had also read at the time....Eric Hoffer's classic....The True Believer....and was well on my way to a life of secular agnosticism at best....but one evening I just happened....(God directed me)....(my prayer is that He directed you to this post)....into a Christian bookstore....and came out with Josh McDowell's.....Evidence That Demands A Verdict. The two powerful arguments against God lost out to McDowell's classic apologetic work!
I laughed when John Piper spoke in detail of Ernest Becker's book in today's....Sermon Of The Day....(desiringgod.org)....in his sermon titled....You Will Never See Death. You can easily Google the sermon. Please do....for it is one of Piper's best on the pure message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
