Some books merit reading because they explain the past unusually well Some books deserve to be read because they clarify the present with uncommon perspective But there are few books that manage to do both Journey in Faith and Fidelity Women Shaping Religious Life for a Renewed Church is one of

Sixteen years after the well received first edition of this book appeared Thomas F O rsquo Meara O P the William K Warren Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame has updated his analysis of the source character and locus of ministry in the church Part systematic theology par

It is difficult to imagine a more complex and challenging literary life for a biographer than that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge After completing a brief critical biography of Coleridge some 25 years ago as a quot trial run quot for a full-length life Walter Jackson Bate concluded ruefully quot I

If this book sold only 535 copies and each found its way into the hands of a member of the U S Senate and House of Representatives it would be a great publishing success Bookstore browsers may be deterred by the rather ambitious subtitle quot How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform Americaand th

Brave novelist Ron Hansen In Mariette in Ecstasy 1991 he entered the mind of a contemplative nun with bleeding stigmata In Atticus 1996 he looked into the paternal love of a 67-year-old Colorado cattleman pursuing his estranged son in Mexico Now in Hitler rsquo s Niece he takes on the young

When the poet Hart Crane jumped from a ship to his death in the waters of the Caribbean on an April morning in 1932 alarmed crewmembers threw life preservers into the water after him Their rescue effort was not only futile but also ironic since Crane rsquo s father had invented the Life Saver can