The collection is filled with contrasts; William F. Buckley's reflections on his upper-crust Catholic childhood, for example, are immediately followed by Maya Angelou's memories of a Depression-era African-American revival meeting in the rural Arkansas of her girlhood. Gaustad's collection seeks, as he says, "to give the bright tapestry that is American religion a fair (though it can never be full) representation." In the diversity of Gaustad's choices and the eloquence of his subjects, "Memoirs of the Spirit" succeeds admirably in suggesting the rich texture of America's religious worlds.