Stranger in a Strange Land is a book written by Robert A. Heinlein that completely throws away the social mores of late 1950s/early 1960s society. The book opens with a ship returning from a trip to Mars with an interesting passenger, a man, Michael Valentine Smith, the son of a previous trip to Mars who was believed to be completely dead. This was a human raised by Martians, who are an ancient race with various powers that are revealed later in the book to be possessed by Smith through his knowledge of their language. When Smith arrives on land, the US government, under the pretense that he is unwell, locks him up in a hospital. Smith is taken away by a nurse and her journalist friend. Smith is brought to Jubal Harshaw who is a wealthy and relatively famous man, who enjoys what amounts to diplomatic immunity due to his previous connections and actions. Smith lives with Harshaw for a while as he develops his body in Earth's gravity and tries to adapt to its social structure. He eventually leaves and travels to try to understand people and eventually does and quickly becomes an extremely confident person. Smith decides that the world would be better if people understood each other. Smith creates a language center that is also a church and commune and slowly gains people who speak the Martian language and can do many of the special things Smith can do, but a large church dislikes his methods and attacks him politically. He eventually indirectly causes a mob to form around a hotel he owns and as he goes to meet them he is preaching, the mob shoots him repeatedly and he dies leaving an effective commune that ultimately teaches the rest of the world how to live. . Stranger in a Strange Land falls in… middle of the paper… to fully understand, this word has been used in many ways in “mainstream” society, used in commercials and some news articles. America has always had a large population that has an organized religion. In the 1950s all the suburbs tried to be the same mean Sunday church and nice house. In the sixties the counterculture, which was the major supporter of the book, was looking for alternatives and Stranger in a Strange land attacked organized religion, in the book there is a huge church that commercializes religion transforming it into a political and economic power and it is exactly the reason why many “hippies” were against organized religion. Heinlein replaces him in a certain sense, but he does so in an obviously imaginary way, creating a religion. Heinlein intended to challenge what the reader was used to, not to create a new society but to change the thoughts people have.