National Museum of American History  /  Objects of Devotion

Over two hundred years of U.S. religious history are presented in this volume of museum artifacts and text.

  • Front cover features the San Rafael santo from eighteenth-century Puerto Rico.
  • Frontispiece with title page features the Torah scroll damaged in 1776 during the occupation of Manhattan by the British.
  • The table of contents is flanked by decorative illustrations of birds and flowers.
  • Section opener for has a detail of Arch Street from “The City of Philadelphia as it Appeared in the Year 1800”
  • Section opener features Frederick Bartoli’s Portrait of Cornplanter, the Dutch-Iroquois leader of the Seneca people.
  • Essay spread has a photograph of Omar ibn Said, a Senegalese man brought to America as a slave who converted to Christianity.
  • Essay opener that features a detail from Edward Hicks’ The Peacable Kingdom that shows several animals and human figures.