Books

“Sally Cunneen By Miri Rubin Yale Univ. Press. 560p $35 9780300105001 As a 13th-century French poet once said, Mary is “the sea that no one exhausts.” Yet the remarkable cultural history that the medieval historian Miri Rubin has assembled from worldwide resources seems to challenge that

An introduction to Pope Benedict's theological vision

As a French poet once said, Mary is the sea that no one exhausts.

Eamon Duffy on Mary Stuart, reviewed

Somehow it seems fitting that Karen Armstrong should make the case for God Her earlier works establish her gift for displaying the vast historical range of a topic with little distortion Here she pursues the human quest for God from the evidence of the cave painters of 30 000 B C E to the musings

Respect human dignity rdquo is a common imperative in ethics yet this imperative is filled with ambiguity On the one hand we say that strong paternalism violates the dignity of the patient On the other hand we say that nothing we do can ever deprive another person of their dignity Can we have

We often use the word wise to mean ldquo insightful rdquo or ldquo graceful rdquo or ldquo shrewd rdquo or even ldquo humble rdquo Philip Levine rsquo s newest just-published poetry collection his 20th not even counting chapbooks is wise in a more fundamental truer way it is knowing

A memoir of an American archbishop

Irish fathers are a disturbingly flawed group.

Genocide has claimed hundreds of thousands of African lives in recent decades In his ambitious new book Tracy Kidder the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer takes readers into the heart of that awful chapter in human history through the eyes of a Burundian medical student named Deogratias mdash known