In 1969 the Apollo astronaut Edwin Aldrin described the ldquo magnificent desolation rdquo of the moon As the United States reflects on its lengthening wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this Veterans Day the issue of how most appropriately to honor soldiers who have died in battle is elevated profoun

Imagine a feasta symposium really in the ancient Greek sense of the wordin which the aim is not merely to enjoy good food and drink but also to share in thoughtful conversation The guest of honor a distinguished Christian thinker is the main course but other luminaries are present occasionall

If you wanted to explain to a visiting Martian what the old American WASP aristocracy was all about you could find worse examples than Roger Angell First there is the pedigree one ancestor Captain John Sheple was captured as a teenager by Abenaki Indians in a raid on Groton Mass in 1694 A

In Running Alone the distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McGregor Burns tracks almost a half-century of what he considers critically flawed American presidential leadership His starting point is John F Kennedy rsquo s success in the 1960 election in which he ran his campaign wit

To read A Balm for Gilead is to want author/friar/physician Daniel Sulmasy and his disciples to be your doctor, nurse or therapist. A practitioner with a deep sense of spirituality who considers healing an encounter with the divine will not blame us for our bad habits, will not be repulsed by what illness does to our bodies, will not give up on us when treatments do not work and will see in us the opportunity to serve God.

Sulmasy takes his title from the spiritual sung in his Harlem parish:

There is a balm in Gilead

This memoir begins with Patricia Hampl rsquo s accidental viewing of the Matisse painting Woman Before an Aquarium which waylaid her on her way to the cafeteria of the Chicago Art Institute to meet a friend some 34 years ago She stood transfixed absorbing the portrait of a woman gazing at a goldf