Books

Two societiesIsraeli and Palestiniancoexist in one land Revered as holy land by Jews Christians and Muslims this special space has for decades been cursed by outrageous violence The present moment is a terrible one for both societies For this very reason conversation between the contending par

Michael Lewis is a splendid and exceptional writer What creates the splendor is his gift for narrative pace for sly wit for the telling detail for the clarity and verve of his sentences What makes him exceptional is his ability to compose gripping tales about highly technical or dull subjects

Notwithstanding the widely publicized campus ruckuses that have sprung up annually over performance of The Vagina Monologues Catholic universities are not the only institutions of higher education struggling over questions of Christian identity It is true that such universities as Harvard Yale an

The poet-novelist-playwright Thomas Bernhard 1931-89 had much to be miserable about He was born out of wedlock to an Austrian carpenter who never acknowledged him and committed suicide in 1940 and a maidservant who promptly passed him on to her father a minor writer named Johannes Freumbichle

The British statesman William E Gladstone reading the U S Constitution 100 years after it entered into force remarked The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man Generations of Americans have since regarded their Consti

In The Language of God Francis Collins has written more of an apologia for his personal religious beliefs than an argument for religious belief itself Were Collins not one of the leading scientists in the world having directed the International Human Genome Project which successfully completed m

ldquo We don rsquo t care about your future You rsquo re an inmate and all inmates are the same rdquo Such were the bleak words of a prison official addressed to Michael Santos who is serving time in a federal facility The official a ldquo unit manager rdquo was angry with him for writing

In the more than 40 years since Vatican II the short document on the relationship of the Catholic Church to other religions Nostra Aetate has emerged as especially important Its section on the Jewish people suggests that mutual understanding and appreciation can best be furthered by biblical and

In November 1949 the year after the publication of his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton dropped a note to his old college friend Robert Lax about the latest news from the Abbey of Gethsemani quot People keep writing from India we should start a monastery there