In this book, Crawford Gribben offers the only full-length history, description, and analysis of the rapture-novel genre. The late 1980s, which saw a renaissance of the evangelical imagination, culminated in the creation of the Left Behind series, co-authored by Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The novels in this series, Gribben shows, are astonishingly derivative - borrowing entire characters and significant incidents from earlier books. Analyzing the unexpected publishing success of the Left Behind novels, he characterizes the series as a barometer of evangelical popular opinion.