If it’s true that a book takes on a life of its own, then each has a life story waiting to be told. So let the telling begin–starting with books that have sought the divine and rocked history, one soul at a time.

That’s the ambitious idea behind the new Lives of Great Religious Books series, which debuted March 24 from Princeton University Press. A similar concept is helping grow religion books in the Penguin Classics series from the Penguin Group (USA).

Each book in Princeton’s series is subtitled “A Biography.” The author’s task: tell how a great work has been interpreted, applied, and used to change lives profoundly over time. For the inaugural trio, Princeton has lined up Augustine’s Confessions by Gary Wills, Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison by Martin Marty, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

With the Lives of Great Religious Books series, Princeton aims to fill a void on the publishing landscape. Fred Appel, editor of the series, notes that Grove/Atlantic has a Books That Changed the World series, but they conspicuously avoid religious topics…

“An educated, curious reader might not want to make his or her way through a large, introductory book,” Appel said. But that reader “might be able to gain good insight into that tradition through a book that recounts the story of the reception of a sacred book.”

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]