Whitley Strieber is a literary legend, and Jesus: A New Vision is the most provocative book of his career. As the author of such influential books as Warday, Nature's End, Communion and Superstorm, he ranks among the cultural forces of our time.

Jesus: A New Vision is at once a magisterial work of scholarship and a completely new approach to the meaning and message of Jesus. It comes at a time when the western world is divided between a declining number of believers in Christian doctrine and an ever-increasing number of people who feel that Jesus was nothing more than a religious zealot who was executed for the crime of sedition.

What if neither of these approaches is right? What if Jesus really did perform miracles, including the resurrection, but that this says not that he was a deity, but that he was exercising human powers which are buried within us all, and which we do not suspect are there?

By exploring the life of Jesus and his teachings in an entirely new way, Jesus: A New Vision sheds fresh light on the meaning and power of his parables, explores the mysteries of the gospels of Thomas and Mary with fresh insight, and explains why, as Strieber puts it, he "committed suicide by crucifixion."

It also addresses the questions that continue to surround the Shroud of Turin, exploring both the science that concluded that it was a medieval forgery and the more recent studies that have shown it to be something very different.

It explores what happened after Jesus's death that led to the ultra-violence that destroyed the entire polytheistic culture of the Roman Empire, and explains why this greatest of all human revolutions happened, relating it to the pandemics and uncontrollable migrations that resulted from a climate change event that began around 150 A.D. and led to extraordinary disruptions that the Romans, knowing nothing of solar variability, blamed on their gods.

In its sweep and its drama, there has never been another book like Jesus: A New Vision.