Greg Garrett is 2013 Centennial Professor at Baylor University, where he teaches classes in fiction and screenwriting, literature, film and popular culture, and theology. The author or co-author of three dozen short stories, a dozen scholarly articles, and twenty books of fiction, nonfiction, and memoir, Dr. Garrett is also Residential Scholar at Gladstone's Library in Wales and a licensed lay preacher in the Episcopal Church. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.

"eminently interesting, affirming, and accessible study of popular religiosity in the modern media age." -- Helen Frisby, Folklore

"This book merges two exciting topics: views of afterlife and popular culture. The author, based at Baylor University, USA, is an expert in popular culture and theology." -- Martin Hoondert, The Mortality Journal

"A strikingly thorough inventory...A useful guide to popular culture and a handy starting place for conversations about the topics it covers."--Christianity Today

"[A] wide-ranging, accessible and lively study."--New Statesmen

"An entertaining and highly readable addition to the field of popular culture studies.."--Publishers Weekly

"A highly engaging journey."--Network Review

"A fun and informative romp."--Theology

"Greg Garrett has given us a scintillating-and deeply informed-portrait of the many (and often surprising) ways the afterlife figures in popular American culture. The result is a convincing and revealing diagnosis of the beliefs and longings that animate twenty-first-century Americans, both Christian and post-Christian." --Carol Zaleski, Professor of World Religions, Smith College

"Our popular culture is utterly absorbed with the afterlife, and in Greg Garrett's book, we are offered incisive and imaginative insights into how to read and understand this emerging cultural turn. There can be few scholars with Garrett's intellectual gifts, who can grasp the themes in contemporary culture so clearly-through movies, novels, TV, radio, music, poetry, art, architecture, graphic novels, computer games, and drama-and emerge with such a prescient understanding of our persistent absorption with the afterlife. Garrett has set a course for future studies in this vital area of scholarly enterprise." --The Very Reverend Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford

"In Entertaining Judgment Greg Garrett skillfully leads his readers through a wide range of portrayals of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, showing how they continue to populate contemporary imaginings. Going beyond well-known routes, this voyage of discovery includes popular films and television series, novels and comics, pop music and biblical stories. Fresh perspectives are brought to light on the journey, through discussions of various imaginative landscapes related to the afterlife. Garrett offers attentive descriptions, thoughtful interpretations and nuanced insights. The result is an engaging expedition that will enrich debates about understandings of life and what may or may not lie beyond." --Jolyon Mitchell, Director, Center for Theological and Public Issues, and Academic Director, The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Edinburgh

"Entertaining Judgement's stronger insights relate to our imaginations of the malevolent afterlife, and how they act as flexible metaphors for whatever most frightens up at any given time. What we fear most is usually the future--the life to come, in one form or another." -- Resurgence and Ecologist

"...[T]his lively study will make a compelling addition to course syllabi in religious studies. Garrett s book is an amusing, thought provoking, informative read. Undergraduate students will recognize and appreciate many of the movies and shows mentioned throughout the chapters and will find the author s prose straightforward and accessible. Entertaining Judgment is an effective quick reference guide and compendium for scholars interested in the afterlife in American pop culture." --Reading Religion