Books

Spiritual genius is the uniquely human ability to seek life rsquo s meaning It rsquo s the voice inside us that keeps asking What rsquo s it all about Who am I How can I make a difference Thus does Winifred Gallagher begin this insightful and important book Her thesis is that all human beings

Back in the boom days of the very near past there was much talk of how stock ownership in the United States had been democratizedwith a stock in every pot There is no doubt that in the 1990 rsquo s many families like my own were suddenly mindful of the market having sunk savings for college or

In Humanity A Moral History of the Twentieth Century Jonathan Glover made his quot moral history quot above all an account of the wars international and civil in which human beings killed one another throughout the century The book made for interesting appalling and enlightening reading Yet

Following another rsquo s spiritual journey can be a voyeuristic undertaking Like sampling diverse liturgies one can as an aloof observer watch others worship making insightful observations about their correctness or oddity But like engaging liturgy one can also accompany the other to find w

America rsquo s Bishop the first full biography of Fulton Sheen holds a candle to its subject The prose does not burn the page Trying to outshine a shooting star is doomed to failure For all his solid scholarship however Thomas C Reeves gives us fast and focused narrative Although loaded wi

Jim Cullen has rowed shorter pieces across the pages of Rolling Stone and Newsday as well as skippered three books through the riptides of cultural studies The Civil War in Popular Culture A Reusable Past Born in the U S A Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition The Art of Democracy A Co

Perhaps the least helpful statement in Susan Sontag rsquo s otherwise indispensable introduction to Summer in Baden-Baden is her peremptory opening declaration that she would include it among the most beautiful exalting and original achievements of a century rsquo s worth of fiction and para-fic

quot The past is a foreign country they do things differently there quot L H Hartley once famously said Few lives exemplify this better than Paul Robeson rsquo s Today one can go to movies or sports arenas or turn on the television and see black actors singers and athletes followed even

If you like church history and especially if you know and like Rome you will like this book Desmond O rsquo Grady is an author and journalist who lives in Rome and is perhaps best known for his Rome Reshaped Jubilees 1300-2000 He is not a professional historian perhaps an advantage in this cas