Books

This new edition of the fascinating account by a medieval Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone of his journeys through the Middle and Far East modern-day Turkey Iran Iraq India Sri Lanka Sumatra Java Borneo Vietnam and China comes at an appropriate moment in our national life Since Sept

Cities often express their unique character through the particular buildings with which they are associated In the United States for example New York City is linked with either the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building not to mention the recently disappeared twin towers of the World Tra

When democracies like the United States go to war it is up to the leaders of these duly elected governments to protect the life liberty and property of its citizens Military conflicts have presented a special challenge to democratic ideals and principles as the laws of the land can be severely t

Though the mostly unheralded centennial of Queen Victoria rsquo s death has now drawn to a close it is pleasant to see various aspects of her sprawling era still being hailed by two writers who differ as Victorian critics might have said toto caelo In a consistently engaging and spirited if som

To what extent would it be meaningful or even coherent to think of the moods and experiences of a human lifeits solitude fears sufferings and joys from birth to deathas spiritual events taking place and reverberating within God Is there not something unyielding about the conditions of life th

Dava Sobel rsquo s 1999 bestseller Galileo rsquo s Daughter made the 17th-century cloistered nun Virginia Galilei in religion Suor Maria Celeste of the Franciscan order of Poor Clares into a worldwide celebrity Despite its title however Galileo rsquo s Daughter was really about the life of t

Finding quality child care in America is almost every parent rsquo s quest or nightmare Presently 13 million American children out of a population of 21 million are in child care Half of those in child care spend 35 hours or more a week in some facility away from the home One-third of the chil

While the majority of the 53 000 babies born prematurely each year in the United States would have died soon after birth if they had been born years ago this improvement is not an unmitigated success story since a good number of these children will endure long-term suffering and disability John L

John Mearsheimer the R Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago has a gift for generating controversy In an address he gave in 1997 to the entering freshman class about the aims of an undergraduate education Mearsheimer argued that Chica