Pilgrim's Progress Books

John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress originally published in 1678 is an enduring classic in Christian inspirational writing. In the present edition Markham and Wiersbe have sought to make this text more accessible to the modern reader by minor updates to the language and structure.

The book describes the allegorical journey of a Christian pilgrim from the City of Destruction to the Eternal City (Earth to Heaven). Throughout this trip the pilgrim encounters a range of individuals that embody various human characteristics (doubt, mistrust, superficiality, etc.). Most thoughtful readers will undoubtedly see something of themselves in these characters.

The editors have added helpful historic and religious notes to better situate the modern reader to Bunyan's seventeenth century context. Brief appendices discussing the Puritans and Bunyan have also been included. Readers who enjoy works such as C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters may be interested in this book.

Overall, it is one of the better works in the genre of inspirational religious writing. I highly recommend it to all readers

Wiersbe's revised edition of this classic is notable for several reasons. The extensive notes, Scripture references and end-of-chapter comments are excellent. Also, the translation manages to retain the style and form of the original--I wasn't jarred by obviously modern words or phrases. I would recommend The New Pilgrim's Progress, especially as a companion in studying Bunyan's original work.

Get this version of Pilgrims Progress if you want to understand it best. The notes in this book are outstanding and are presented along side the text so you don't have to flip pages. I have given out about 10 copies of this book to my friends and they have all loved it. I have read this book to young and old and they all enjoyed it. Yes, it is a paraphase but it lovingly captures the message and explains the historical context.

Do not forget that Bunyan was a simple tinker; a practical man. I don't think he would have objected to this paraphrase so long as the message he intended came through clearly and was accessible to everyone, and in this, it well accomplishes. Warren W. Wiersbe is a well known international Bible conference teacher, a gifted communicator, and is known as a "pastors, pastor." He has kept to Bunyan's meaning and gives about the best running commentaries available. Buy the original for its poetic language, but if you want to understand its timeless message and have a fun read, buy this version. In fact, buy five copies and share them with friends. It was the message, not the language, which made this one of two books almost every English family owned in Bunyan's times.

Wiersebe has done a great job revising the English to make Pilgrim's Progress understandable to the modern American. His revisions are done sparingly, preserving the style of the original.
As a devout Evangelical himself, Wiersbe has no agenda other than making the work understandable. His notes and comments at the end of each section offer theological insights, both true to Bunyan and true to the Scripture.

If you are reading Pilgrim's Progress for you own edification, or if you are teaching a class, this is the best edition.

Having read the original many years ago, I find this version refreshing and necessary to our times. Sadly, some of our commentaries thrashing the book for paraphrasing shows an "artsy" snobery when what we should be doing is hailing the author for being inciteful enough to realize that the message is what is most important and it will not reach it's intended audience if they cannot understand the language. Let's face it, the USA sits at the bottom of the educational food chain; perhaps this version of the book will reach and thus help bring to Christ some of our less educated brothers and sisters. Isn't that what is most important?

The critics are comparing this latest offering from Olds to the best of John Dos Passos, in particular to the latter's USA Trilogy, a comparison that is not un-apt. Though I would suggest that Olds, in terms of both character portraiture and pure sentence-for-sentence writing, has it all over the older author.

Typically, Olds's approach and style are not everyone's cup of tea. He seems to be a novelist who, because his aesthetic is so defiantly idiosyncratic, uncompromising, and extravagant, with each new book further divides critical opinion as to the ultimate merit of his work.

The Moments Lost is not an "easy" read. One must bring one's fair share of patient intellect to the party, as well as a well-honed, heightened appreciation of the language AS language. But if the reader is willing to surrender, to "go with the shuffle and flow" that Olds so expertly creates here, he will, in the end, find himself more than richly rewarded, not only with an epic story passionately told, but with the lyrical excavation and disinterrment of a moment in our nation's history that until now has remained unjustly buried.

I found the prose, the first of his that I have read, self-conscious and pretentious. His style is choppy. The story does not flow because it is bloated with unnecessarily arcane words. I gave it up after fifty pages.
Read something else.

This is the author's third novel and his most ambitious. It's a large, hell of a story, with a prose style equal to it. Any great novel takes the reader on a journey, and Olds offers a long, sweeping ride, with a historical view as seen from both ends of a telescope: far and near - from both past and present. A masterful rendering of not just a particular moment, but literally moments, moments lived, wasted, thrown away, and redeemed only, it might seem, through the blessings of the reader. Olds writes like a wise man. This could be accidental the way the talented occasionally manage, or, if we're all lucky, the author may indeed be gifted with some vision. He sees life the way it is, the only way it can be, which is a writer's primary duty. None of his characters are extraneous, all are fully realized, guided, often misguided, equally by their strengths and weaknesses. In this world virtue, sin, principle, hypocrisy, and folly, share top billing. It's like a Russian classic written by a rootin tootin literary modern cowboy, who's "always a little bit drunk," on mescal probably, the worm turning in his belly. Only four stars. Four and a half, had I too some mescal - but the flaws are few and may even serve the novel to remind the reader of the terrain he is crossing. Very worth your time.

Whether this is the best or the worst of the author's three novels to date is arguable, but it clearly is his most necessary, as it is, one presumes, the one closest to his heart.

The impetus for its composition, as he reveals, originated in his personal ancestral history, and this is a fact that, for the reader, only amplifies and augments the multi-layered meanings of its colorfully compelling, cinematically-written story which is set in turn-of-the-2Oth-century Chicago and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the bloody copper mine strike of 1913-4.

Once again, Olds's many writerly virtues--which, at moments, can also be his vices--are on high display here: the clamorous intelligence, the extensive vocabulary, the baroquely beautiful sentences, the lyrically interior voice, the graphically vivid concrete descriptions, the privileging of style over character and character over plot.

While this clearly is the most ambitious of the author's novels, it also is his most conventionally structured, eschewing the multi-dimensional cubist/collage approach he employed to such devastating effect in "Raising Holy Hell" and "Bucking the Tiger," for a narrative of more linearity, continuity, and cohesion. Whether this indicates a newfound maturity or rather signifies a deliberate retreat from the author's trademark literary brinksmanship is a judgment each reader must make for him or her self.

However, in this one's opinion, it not only works, but does so to brilliant, moving, and even profound effect.

Fans of biography as well as novels will find intriguing and different THE MOMENTS LOST: A MIDWEST PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, a novel which charts the progress of one Franklyn Shives, who arrives in turn-of-the-century Chicago to become a newspaper reporter even as his bohemian lifestyle is becoming entangled in relationship issues. His assignment to cover the Wobblie-led 1913 copper mine strike in Michigan will further change his life and lead to betrayal and love lost in this hard-hitting novel of one man's changes and revelations, perfect for public libraries strong in literary novels.

This novel is a profound work of immense religious significance. It is, perhaps, second only to the Bible in popularity among Christians. It is also one of the greatest literary allegories.

At least, this is what most literary critics would have you believe. Make no mistake, I greatly enjoyed The Pilgrim's Progress. It succeeds on many levels as an adventure novel. Its attempt to be a piece of allegorical storytelling is where it fails. None of the symbolism is especially deep and the characters all are named after (and stand for) virtues or vices. Making every character nothing more than a talking symbol was a faulty move on author Bunyan's part (although after reading his introduction/apology, I believe this was his intention.) As a result the reader never invests any emotion into the characters and is prone to boredom as the story is told (although saying the pacing is quick would be a severe understatement.) The lack of extensive characterization and exposition makes the novel read more like the Sunday newspaper than a living story. There are also very few suprises in this novel. Christian's (the main character) destination is revealed to us when the story begins, and because Christianity centers on good conquering evil, the reader can have no doubt that the hero will end up where he needs to be.

The Pilgrim's Progress is not without its strong points. As stated above the pacing is very quick; the actual plot gets moving full-speed within the first three pages of the story and never lets up. For readers with short attention spans (such as myself) this is a great relief. The story's simplicity also works to its advantage. We are told that Christian must reach the Celestial City in order to escape damnation and be saved. The entire book is simply a chronicle of his adventures along the way. As stated, he meets virtues and vices and encounters all forms of moral peril (such as laziness) and environmental dangers (such as a fiery mountain that consumes those who trust in one of Christian's enemies). He even does battle with monsters. Another one of the book's strengths is its appeal to "mere" Christianity, that is, it has a message with which every Christian sect would agree. There are a few jabs at the Roman Catholic Church, but these are minor and extremely few. Bunyan himself was a Puritan, a child of Protestantism, so small remarks such as these should not be of any real suprise. They do not detract from the story in the least.

Of course, none of this attempts to be true, and the reader is told by the author himself that the story is presented in "the similitude of a dream". Is the story dream-like? Sure, it is fantastic enough. Is it a clever allegory? It is allegorical, but not terribly clever. If you're in for a good adventure than this book is for you. If you like your symbolism to have more thought than you may want to consult Lewis' Narnia series.

I Corinthians 13 says the following: If I have all faith as to
remove mountains, but have not love, then I am nothing...

Bunyan's allegory about Christian's journey is
predominantly a journey about faith....He doesn't really
talk about one's day to day struggles, and the need to
bear each other's burdens....It is primarily a solo kind of
journey here, but this should not be too surprising
considering that the book is an allegory about one's
own INNER struggle to avoid temptation, as typified by
"the world". In Christ our flesh has been crucified, so we
are not to dwell on earthly things.

I think the book succeeds admirably in admonishing the
Christian to avoid temptation and stay on the path that is
narrow and straight.

With that said, this is a remarkably readable version, that
is at the same time true to the original 17th century text.
Only spelling and punctuation have been changed to aid
the modern reader. Grammar and paragraphing have not
been altered. Where a word's meaning has changed over
time, its archaic meaning is included as a footnote. Also,
where Bunyan quotes from the Bible, directly or indirectly,
the passages quoted from are cited. The editors have
done a remarkable job, although truthfully I haven't looked
at all the other versions out there....For me, this version
does the job.

I'm not a Pilgrim's Progress expert, but this doesn't seem to be the best edition of this book. There are footnotes (including Bunyan's own notes) but they are often "late"; for example, footnotes to explain the archaic meaning of the word are often included on the second or third appearance of the word. Also, the editor has included indicators as to who is speaking in each paragraph (much like a stage script) but it is not consistent.

Shop around and see if you can find a better edition of Pilgrim's Progress.

I purchased this book for my husband as a Christmas
gift. He was in the process of reading it and found that pages144-177 were missing. The book is useless to us.

The book is told from the third person perspective in the context of a dream. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, the narrator follows a character named Christian from the time he leaves the City of Destruction and his family, accepting the path Chirst lays out for him, and watches Christian progress through his earthly journey until he reaches Heaven. Many of the elements encountered in the Christian faith are personified as characters that Christian encounters. The second half of the book tells the account of Christian's wife's and children's journey toward Heaven. The margins of the book are filled with scripture references that go along with the story. A good background in protestant theology makes the book much more enjoyable. I found The Pilgram's Progress to be very insightful.

This is a great book. It has helped many Christians throughout history in their Christian walk. I would highly recommend getting this nice edition. Give it to your son for his birthday gift. Give it to your daugther before she goes into the lion's den of college.

This is the version of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress for the whole family to enjoy together. With character studies. I was baptized pilgrim. The pilgrim religion is like Catholic taken to an extreme and similar to Amish. They're more concerned with God loving them. John Bunyan was a 1600s super big redneck in the days when they all lived on frontier cottages. Pilgrim religion and goods are still popular today. I'm an evangelist for Pilgrim Lutheran Church. I'm not gonna get on your case, that's where Mormon missionaries screwed up on. Nor am I preaching. It's old school Catholic but with humor. I'm a family of one. I like it. Amen.

I got this for free from another site, so I can't complain about the price. I have to say that this was a pretty disappointing narration of The Pilgrim's Progress. This is a book that I think would have been best read by a male voice, such as Simon Vance or Nick Cordileone (who've both done work for this same publisher).

I would recommend the version done by Max McLean.

The addition of a Table of Contents would have made this work usable, but without one it isn't worth purchasing. All multiple-book Kindle offerings should have at least a rudimentary TOC.