Books

Whether one agrees with the specific conclusions of the author or not one has to admit that the book delivers on the promise of its subtitle In readable dispassionate language which is itself highly unusual for a book on this topic the author takes the reader through the major issues of the c

In the summer of 1961 I asked the proprietor of a Catholic bookstore in Paris whether he had a copy of Yves Congar rsquo s True and False Reform in the Church After looking around he took me into a back office and from a bottom drawer pulled out a copy of the book Only later did I learn the moti

I began writing my review of John Updike rsquo s new collection of poems Americana during the week of Sept 11 and froze unable to inch forward as the ironies in a book that begins with 15 poems about seeing America from the air compounded and screamed back at me Poems with titles like ldquo C

Prayer is not alien territory for women They know the terrain well Detours bumps shortcuts slippery roads smooth sailing dangerous intersections cruise control They rsquo ve been there Done that Fortunately for us all women have left behind records of their journeys Sometimes thes

There are two schools of American history Oneconservative nationalistic mythmakingcelebrates America as the city on the hill a land of liberty and escape from European tyranny The otherradical iconoclastic demythologizingviews the United States as the last global empire and laments its oppres

The Sri Lakshmi Temple is a popular center for the worship of the goddess Lakshmi known for her graciousness and generosity Tamil-speaking Hindu priests perform the daily and festival rituals while Hindus young and old come from neighboring towns to beg her favor and celebrate her glory To Lakshm

Louis-Marie Chauvet professor of sacramental theology at the Institut Catholique in Paris is not widely known this side of the Atlantic His first work published in the United States Symbol and Sacrament A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence caught the eye of many sacramental th

It was 1998 the Welfare Reform Bill had just passed and the writer Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to know how the four million women about to be booted into the labor market were going to make it on 6 or 7 an hour When the question came up over lunch with Harper rsquo s editor Lewis Lapham she sugge

In 1996 Jack Miles won the Pulitzer Prize for biography with a learned gripping semi-plausible flight of fancy Since the Hebrew Bible is doubtlessamong other thingsa collection of stories about a figure or figures Elohim Yahweh El Shaddai etc whom Westerners have agreed to call God Miles p

The Mountain of Silence is a personal search by a recently reconverted agnostic sociologist into the world of Orthodox spirituality Like most Western academics I associated the representative of institutionalized religion if not with narrow-mindedness intolerance and corruption then at least w