Swaggart

the long version

This biography of Jimmy Swaggart relates his early years in poverty as a sharecropper's son. Born around the same time are his famous cousins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley. This book also details the rise of Pentecostalism and its "evil twin" Rock and Roll. Jimmy Swaggart was one of the most popular video preachers in the world, until a moment of indiscretion in a New Orleans motel. This unauthorized biography looks at Swaggart's life, as well as discussing the religious and societal movements responsible, in part, for his rise and fall. Ann Rowe Seaman approaches her subject not with Old Testament invective but with a patience that conveys an intimate understanding of the man's world. While not an apologist for Swaggart, Seaman probes beyond the headlines for the factors that shaped the pastor's psyche and defined his world. The result is an intelligent and smoothly readable personal history that chronicles a fascinating slice of Americana.