Spellbound

How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump

By: Molly Worthen

Narrated by: Molly Worthen

What happens when Americans lose faith in their religious institutions—and politicians fill the void? From the Puritans to Donald Trump, this sweeping history will change your understanding of the forces that create leaders and hold their followers captive.

“Elegant and insightful, Spellbound is an important contribution to the urgent project of understanding America in our time.”—Jon Meacham

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Everyone feels it. Cultural and political life in America has become unrecognizable and strange. Firebrands and would-be sages have taken the place of reasonable and responsible leaders. Nuanced debates have given way to the smug confidence of yard signs. How did we get here?

In Spellbound, historian Molly Worthen argues that we will understand our present moment if we learn the story of charisma in America. From the Puritans and Andrew Jackson to Black nationalists and Donald Trump, the saga of American charisma, Worthen argues, stars figures who possess a dangerous and alluring power to move crowds. They invite followers into a cosmic drama where hopes are fulfilled and grievances are put right—and these charismatic leaders insist that they alone plot the way.

The story of charisma in America reveals that when traditional religious institutions fail to deliver on their promise of a meaningful life, people will get their spiritual needs met in a warped cultural and political landscape dominated by those who appear to have the power to bring order and meaning out of chaos. Charismatic leaders address spiritual needs, offering an alternate reality where people have knowledge, power, and heroic status, whether as divinely chosen instruments of God or those who will restore national glory.

Through Worthen’s centuries-spanning historical research, Spellbound places a crucial religious lens on the cultural, economic, and political upheavals facing Americans today.

Critic reviews

“Finally—someone with something new to say about Donald Trump! Molly Worthen’s training as a historian of religion allows her to see what others have missed: Trump is the latest variation in a long, fascinating, and often weird history of American charismatic leaders. With her usual wit and energetic prose, Worthen connects the dots so we can see the full picture.”—Beverly Gage, professor of history at Yale University and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

“Spellbound is a wild and satisfying romp through the history of American religion and politics, and a simultaneously sober and hopeful appraisal of the present moment.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“The great story of charisma in American history, from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to MAGA, has never been more thrillingly told, never more learnedly explicated.”—Tom Holland, co-host of The Rest Is History podcast and bestselling author of Pax and Dominion

“Elegant and insightful, Molly Worthen’s Spellbound is an important contribution to the urgent project of understanding America in our time. Far from polemical, the book explores the nature of charisma, that essential and elusive element in the course of human events. . . . A truly original study.”—Jon Meacham, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of And There Was Light

“America is a land of paradox, one that separates church and state but invests its politics with a religious fervor and looks every four years to elect the new messiah. In this book, Molly Worthen sets these peculiarities of American culture in the context of a broader narrative, examining the changing nature of charisma and of the often latent but always dynamic relationship that exists between the great and the good and the people who grant—or ascribe to them—such cultural power.”—Carl R. Trueman, professor at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

“A vivid, deeply researched exploration of charisma . . . A masterclass in historical analysis, skillfully demonstrating that charisma is not about the person, but about the ever-changing needs of the societies that embrace them.”—Library Journal, starred review

“Drawing on fine-grained historical research, Worthen makes insightful forays into how power is mediated in the public sphere and how Americans express their need for ‘transcendent meaning and . . . worship’ through means that can seem anything but divine. It amounts to a revealing window into shifting currents of American social, religious, and political thought.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Loved this new description of charisma and the sweeping examples from history.

Just finished listening to this absolutely fascinating book. I've taught charismatic leadership in my management classes my entire career, but this book has changed my thinking and I now see charisma differently. "The heart of charisma is an invitation to enter a compelling story about human identity and purpose.....The best way to understand people is to examine the idols they worship and the stories they tell themselves." Highly recommend!

Molly Worthen Being Molly Worthen

Review of Spellbound by Molly Worthen

In Spellbound Molly Worthen turns her historian’s gaze on the hard to measure charisma simmering beneath faith, political, & even self-help movements.

Spellbound is part cultural history, part spiritual anthropology. The book’s strength lies in its historical and journalistic balance. Worthen neither mocks nor proselytizes; she treats her subjects with curiosity and respect.

4.7/5

Extremely well written and very compelling

The many vignettes over four centuries are very instructive, and the through line on “charisma” is quite helpful. It made sense of what otherwise had been separate phenomena. It goes a long way toward explaining Trump and the past decade.

Outstanding in every way

This book is a masterclass in everything that historical research and prose should be. With elegance and panache, Molly Worthen broaches what is probably the most urgent issue of our times, in all of its richness and ambivalence: how individuals seem to be imbued with a charismatic power that responds to some of the most primordial instincts of human beings. She describes the phenomenon as a complex dialectic between figure and public, and makes a compelling case that we can't really grasp political history without understanding its relation to religious and spiritual practices. Worthen gives a nuanced account that manages to make us feel immersed in the peculiarities of history; organized chronologically and typologically (through different charismatic "types"), Worthen stages encounters with some of the most fascinating personalities from history that have exerted a remarkable power--both attractive and repulsive (depending on whether one is under their spell), for good and for ill--and manages to make America weird (for this reader, that's a good thing). To be sure, sometimes American history appears "weird" in a good way, sometimes in a horrifying way, but the lesson is that everyone will discover their own historically conditioned tendencies by how they react to these stories with their own particularized affective states. From Anne Hutchinson to Andrew Jackson to Joseph Smith, Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis and Donald Trump, Worthen takes us on a journey that will itself leave us--just a bit--spellbound, but with enough critical distance for us to grasp the phenomenon and respond to it with reflection and understanding. A truly inspirational book and a necessary one for the current moment.