Our culture supports so many types of celebrity—online influencers, YouTube stars, Hollywood actors, reality-TV contestants—that it is easy to forget how recent this market saturation is. In the early ...

In 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson was a bona fide celebrity. The Canadian evangelist drew throngs of to her massive church, Angelus Temple, which still stands in Echo Park, and spread her message even ...

In Claire Hoffman’s first book, “Greetings From Utopia Park,” she describes growing up as a follower of Transcendental Meditation. Her second book, “Sister, Sinner” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a ...

She was a blend of P.T. Barnum, the colorful showman credited with declaring, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and the infamous flamboyant televangelist couple Tammy Faye and Jim Baker who built ...