{"title":"John Wigger","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"hijacking-of-american-flight-119-book-john-wigger-9780197695753","title":"The Hijacking of American Flight 119","description":"He pulled off what some deem the crime of the century: skyjacking a commercial jetliner, collecting a ransom of $200,000, parachuting off the aft stairs of the Boeing 727 into the night, and simply disappearing. Since November 1971, \"D.B. Cooper\"—no one knows his real name or identity—has become a figure of enduring fascination and obsession. The FBI pursued him for over forty years, before closing the case and leaving it unsolved.  Unsolved, perhaps, but much admired. D.B. Cooper's exploit over the skies of the American Northwest has inspired books, films, and endless speculation. What's less known is that it inspired imitators. None were more daring than the hijacker of American Airlines Flight 119. After commandeering the flight from St. Louis with a machine gun and collecting $502,500 in ransom, he parachuted out over Indiana. Unlike Cooper, he was tracked down.  In The Hijacking of American Flight 119, John Wigger explores the wave of hijackings that swept over commercial flight between 1961 and 1972. One hijacker ran across the ramp in Reno, Nevada with a pillowcase over his head, gun in hand, to seize a United Airlines flight. Another collected a large ransom in Washington, D.C. before jumping over Honduras. Yet another rode a bicycle across the tarmac with a rifle strapped to the handlebars. Motivations involved an admixture of ideology, greed, derring-do, and a desperate need to be somebody. What they had in common was that their exploits transfixed the nation's attention, bringing about a transformation in airline security that remains with us still.  With its focus on the parachute hijackers, Wigger's book gathers together the stories of this period of daring criminality and recounts them in gripping fashion, showing their effect on the public, the media, and law enforcement. Using never-before- published interviews and first-hand accounts, he brings to life one of the most chaotic and fascinating periods in American aviation history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746214158609,"sku":"NGR9780197695753","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49980686074129,"sku":"CIN0197695752G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50096742924561,"sku":"GOR013853519","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999959027985,"sku":"NIN9780197695753","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52889405161745,"sku":"CIN0197695752LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197695752.jpg?v=1776938603"},{"product_id":"ptl-book-john-wigger-9780199379712","title":"PTL","description":"In the early months of 1987 Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had it all-a popular Christian talk show, produced on their own PTL satellite television network, a 2300-acre theme park visited by six million people, 2700 employees, and millions of adoring fans. By the end of that year the Bakkers would lose everything. Jim became embroiled in a sexual assault lawsuit, which resulted in his forced resignation as president of PTL. Two years later he was accused and eventually convicted of fraud, landing him in jail for nearly five years. The Bakker empire had fallen, and to many its collapse was symbolic of the changes occurring in the wider culture, both evangelical and secular.   Many who watched the trial of Jim Bakker viewed its circus-like atmosphere as the very essence of the 1980s culture of excess, and particularly the greed and hypocrisy of prominent televangelists. Others-those who were employed by the PTL, or whose lives were touched by the Bakker's-saw the organization as an inspiring, innovative, and sincere attempt to spread the word of God, and were not entirely disillusioned by its disbandment. This juxtaposition is illustrated in the very name of the organization: to believers the acronym stood for Praise the Lord or People that Love, while critics said it stood for Pass the Loot or Pay the Lady (a reference Tammy Faye's outrageous makeup). Thus, in three letters, one finds the tensions that defined the time-the boundless optimism of evangelicals paired with the equal and opposite skepticism of non-believers; America's newfound fanaticism for televised entertainment and the disdain for the lurid excesses of the rich and famous.   On its surface, PTL is the spectacular story of the rise and fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker from humble beginnings to wealth, fame, and eventual disgrace. John Wigger makes the case that this is also the story of a group of people who stood at the center of several major trends in American religion and culture during the 1970s and 1980s: the expansion of religion into television and entertainment, the extension of a faith mission model of the church, the rise and collapse of the prosperity gospel, the increasing power of religious celebrities, the mobilization of the laity, and the resurgence of evangelicalism in American life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49768918384913,"sku":"GOR009989512","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50815713149201,"sku":"CIN0199379718G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000136040721,"sku":"NIN9780199379712","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415558914321,"sku":"CIN0199379718VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52616795226385,"sku":"NLS9780199379712","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199379718.jpg?v=1750973677"},{"product_id":"taking-heaven-by-storm-book-john-h-wigger-9780252069949","title":"Taking Heaven by Storm","description":"In 1770 there were fewer than 1,000 Methodists in America. Fifty years later, the church counted more than 250,000 adherents. Identifying Methodism as America's most significant large-scale popular religious movement of the antebellum period, John H. Wigger reveals what made Methodism so attractive to post-revolutionary America.     Taking Heaven by Storm shows how Methodism fed into popular religious enthusiasm as well as the social and economic ambitions of the \"middling people on the make\"--skilled artisans, shopkeepers, small planters, petty merchants--who constituted its core. Wigger describes how the movement expanded its reach and fostered communal intimacy and \"intemperate zeal\" by means of an efficient system of itinerant and local preachers, class meetings, love feasts, quarterly meetings, and camp meetings. He also examines the important role of African Americans and women in early American Methodism and explains how the movement's willingness to accept impressions, dreams, and visions as evidence of the work and call of God circumvented conventional assumptions about education, social standing, gender, and race.     A pivotal text on the role of religion in American life, Taking Heaven by Storm shows how the enthusiastic, egalitarian, entrepreneurial, lay-oriented spirit of early American Methodism continues to shape popular religion today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50127139963153,"sku":"CIN0252069943G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51694478950673,"sku":"CIN0252069943VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0252069943.jpg?v=1767355064"},{"product_id":"american-saint-book-john-wigger-9780195387803","title":"American Saint","description":"English-born Francis Asbury was one of the most important religious leaders in American history. Asbury single-handedly guided the creation of the American Methodist church, which became the largest Protestant denomination in nineteenth-century America, and laid the foundation of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements that flourish today. John Wigger has written the definitive biography of Asbury and, by extension, a revealing interpretation of the early years of the Methodist movement in America. Asbury emerges here as not merely an influential religious leader, but a fascinating character, who lived an extraordinary life. His cultural sensitivity was matched only by his ability to organize. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. He had a remarkable ability to connect with ordinary people, and he met with thousands of them as he crisscrossed the nation, riding more than one hundred and thirty thousand miles between his arrival in America in 1771 and his death in 1816. Indeed Wigger notes that Asbury was more recognized face-to-face than any other American of his day, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345486582033,"sku":"CIN0195387805G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52452549099793,"sku":"NLS9780195387803","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195387805.jpg?v=1776939427"},{"product_id":"american-saint-book-john-wigger-9780199948246","title":"American Saint","description":"English-born Francis Asbury was one of the most important religious leaders in American history. Asbury single-handedly guided the creation of the American Methodist church, which became the largest Protestant denomination in nineteenth-century America, and laid the foundation of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements that flourish today. In American Saint, John Wigger has written the definitive biography of Asbury and, by extension, a revealing interpretation of the early years of the Methodist movement in America. Asbury emerges here as not merely an influential religious leader, but a fascinating character, who lived an extraordinary life. His cultural sensitivity was matched only by his ability to organize. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. He had a remarkable ability to connect with ordinary people, and he met with thousands of them as he crisscrossed the nation, riding more than one hundred and thirty thousand miles between his arrival in America in 1771 and his death in 1816. 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By 1987 they stood at the center of a ministry empire that included their own satellite network, a 2300-acre theme park visited by six million people a year, and millions of adoring fans. The Bakkers led a life of conspicuous consumption perfectly aligned with the prosperity gospel they preached. They bought vacation homes, traveled first-class with an entourage and proclaimed that God wanted everyone to be healthy and wealthy.   When it all fell apart, after revelations of a sex scandal and massive financial mismanagement, all of America watched more than two years of federal investigation and trial as Jim was eventually convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. He would go on to serve five years in federal prison.   PTL is more than just the spectacular story of the rise and fall of the Bakkers, John Wigger traces their lives from humble beginnings to wealth, fame, and eventual disgrace. At its core, PTL is the story of a group of people committed to religious innovation, who pushed the boundaries of evangelical religion's engagement with American culture.   Drawing on trial transcripts, videotapes, newspaper articles, and interviews with key insiders, dissidents, and lawyers, Wigger reveals the power of religion to redirect American culture. This is the story of a grand vision gone wrong, of the power of big religion in American life and its limits.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50999866065169,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999868915985,"sku":"NIN9780197649602","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197649602.jpg?v=1750693886"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-john-wigger.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}