that's what i look for in dietrich bonhoeffer. for those of you who have not done a lot with bonheoffer, is i'll say a few things. he lived as long as martin luther king. often asked four people say in the spiritual field that made a living in the 20th century worthwhile. you hear mother teresa, martin luther king, dorothy day, and bonheoffer. he lived to be 39 and the last three years were in prison. basically he lived to be 36. this is the newest edition of the book i wrote about. this is the one you might want to buy because it's affordable and carryable. it's the $16 -- 16 senior high volume series. he was ag -- active in underground activities, double agent in the cia if you want to call it that, spent a year in america, went to barcelona, had a church in london, all that crammed in there, and my search for his soul was what held him together. as a christian he was an ordained minister. you naturally look for what the resources for the faith were, and i find that he's held together by promise. the last thing he said as they l

and he has written a biography of dietrich bonhoeffer's letters and papers from prison. it's one of three books that's kicking off a series of such books from princeton university press. and to start our discussion, i want to read the press' description of what they're trying to do and then ask dr. marty to comment on it. they say that this new series recounting the complex and fascinating histories of important religious texts written for general readers by leading authors and experts is intended to trace how their reception, interpretation and influence have changed over time. often radically. as these stories remind us, all great religious books are living things whose careers in the world can take the most unexpected turns. now, dr. marty, you've also recently completed and published a biography of martin luther, a lutheran who somewhat predated dietrich bonhoeffer. [laughter] what's the difference between with writing a biography of a figure like luther and be -- and a book like bonhoeffer's? >> there are far more similarities than i thought i would find. when princ

[laughter] and dietrich bonhoeffer was their hero. why? back to your question. some of the radical ideas he was pursuing that adds to the interest in the book, he had seen the terror of a religion taken over by the state. in a way that's what hitler was doing. he saw a lot of false piety, people pray, pray, pray and then they're anti-semitic or something like that, really bothered him. so he had kind of a three-pronged thing. first of all, we use the word secularization. he saw secularization. germany, which had this long religious tradition, it was being jetsonned in the universities, and some of the books he read while in prison dealt with that. and so he, a strong influence on him was carl bart in switzerland, and he just studied as much as he could from the book. bart had written a book called -- it wasn't a book, it was a 50,000-word footnote. [laughter] you could count 'em. called "religion is unbelief, "because he believes people form a caste about their religion that keeps god from them. so he didn't think the a total tragedy that secularization was comi