Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Guatemala Nunca Ms!

What paradise and what ashes are meant by the title Paradise in Ashes A Guatemalan Journey of Courage Terror and Hope The paradise refers to the small village of Santa Mar a Tzej In the late 1960 rsquo s it was virtually carved out of the rain forest in northern Guatemala by a group of poor

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Tested by Fire

J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist whose brilliant blue eyes came to express such engulfing sadness, brought a new kind of fire into the world and was burned by it. Like Hesiod’s Prometheus, Oppenheimer fought on the side of humankind, giving us the tools and weapons to determine our own fate; and fate punished him for it.

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Communio

Cardinal Walter Kasper prefect of the Vatican rsquo s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was well established as a theologian long before being made a bishop For many years he was on the faculty of the University of T bingen where his colleagues included Hans K ng His present bo

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

To the Bitter End

The newest book from Stephen Koch the celebrated author of Double Lives Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War Against the West and The Modern Library Writer rsquo s Workshop is a riveting mix of biography and history As biographer Koch writes of Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos their

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Music’s New World Order

This capacious impressive often enjoyable book takes as its point of departure the late 19th-century orchestral cultures of New York and Boston assembling a story for which the author rsquo s Understanding Toscanini and Wagner Nights well prepared him This focus is understandable since Joseph H

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Alas, an Uncivil Alliance

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were historical landmarks This double-barreled assault on apartheid in the United States was the first time since 1875 that Congress was able to muster the votes necessary to make good on the Constitution 8217 s promise of equality Un

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

A Loving Look Back

Born in Berlin in 1923 to affluent Jewish parents Gregory Baum was sent for safety to England as a young teenager With the outbreak of war the refugee became an enemy alien and was interned in Canada Befriended there by a Catholic family he discovered Augustine rsquo s Confessions Like Edith S

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Worship’s Place, Space

The problematic issues regarding art and architecture vis- -vis worship and current liturgical practice have seldom been thornier The saying that real art won rsquo t match the sofa seems to sum up the status of art today At least in the areas of painting and sculpture what is considered ldquo

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Separation Anxiety

This is a provocative even polemical book The provocation flows from the near-taboo question it raises a question that merits a serious hearing How much time do children need with parents especially mothers Do we need to scrutinize closely America rsquo s ongoing massive historically unprece

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Off to (Another) Greenland?

Not long ago surely in a fit of masochism I dusted off The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire What with the current administration rsquo s tactful outsourcing of war to the brave but dominantly underclass warrior lack of interest for anything that smacks of environmental concern and the conspi

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