In Choosing Presidents, Novak uses the election of an American president as a means to dissect the symbols of our national life and politics, exposing many as distorted perceptions of American realities

One: Priest, Prophet, King; 1: Symbolic Realism; 2: What Are Symbols?; 3: Who Are We?; 4: Unseen Power; 5: Egalitarian and King; 6: Five Elements of Symbolic Power; 7: Making the Most of Improbable Talents; 8: A Professional's Memo; 9: The Liturgy of Leadership; Two: Moralism and Morality; 10: Being Moral and Being Practical; 11: The Constituency of Conscience; 12: That Word Moral; 13: Vietnam: More Moral Than Thou?; 14: The Rise and Fall of Liberal Moralism; 15: Beyond Niebuhr: Symbolic Realism; Three: The Civil Religions of America; 16: The Nation with the Soul of a Church; 17: The Innocence Lingers On; 18: The Civil Religions; 19: Five Protestant Civil Religions; 20: High-Church America; 21: The Second Great Tradition; Four: Symbols of 1972; 22: Traditional Symbols; 23: New Hampshire Snows; 24: The Wallace Sun; 25: McCarthy in Illinois; 26: Sorting Out in Wisconsin; 27: Together with McGovern at the Garden; 28: The Shooting of Governor Wallace; 29: Eight Major Presidential Symbols; Five: A New and Dark Faith; 30: America as a Business; 31: Three Corruptions; 32: Reforming the Presidency; 33: The Necessity of Dirty Hands; 34: The Dark Night of Faith; 35: The New Dark Civil Religion; Six: Afterword; 36: Carter's Hidden Religious Majority; 37: Rival Visions of Community, 1988; 38: Moiling, Muddling, and Malaise; 39: Miracle in the Desert