I'm not a big fan of Stockman because of how he went about this book. He's spoken at my college several times since writing the book (since it's a Christian college and we can't get U2) and is an acquaintance with one of my profs and everyone agrees he's a terrible writer, he doesn't even know the band, and he's become semi-famous for this "non-topic". I had a long talk with my prof about this (the one who knows Stockman) and it was an interesting convo being that this is a communications theory prof and he said that while Stockman is a perfectly nice guy, it's like he just woke up one day and decided to write a book about U2 and spirituality, because he's a huge U2 fan with nothing better to write about at the time, and obviously people would buy it. We agreed that people should write because of something that comes to them when they are not paying attention, not something they decide and go searching for, if that makes sense. Like it would be one thing of Stockman was a friend of Bono's and knew all these personal struggles he's had and then was so inspired, he wrote a book, but instead he was like "I'm a huge U2 fan and a writer so I'll make up a book about U2's spirituality."
I appreciate the book for what it provides for people that are either new to U2 or new to Christian spirituality, but beyond that it's nothing but a report about U2 and some personal interpretations of lyrics. One thing that bugs me is some of the assumptions he makes about certain lyrics are dead wrong based on what Bono's actually said about them.
His approach to spirituality and theology in this book is surface at best, and the information about U2 is nothing a fan couldn't find in any other U2 book or Rolling Stone article.