Joan Didion has been writing books for more than 40 years. Her newest and most unforgettable book is "The Year of Magical Thinking."

Graham Greene has had a difficult time winning the title of ldquo Catholic Novelist rdquo mdash one that he never wanted anyway At the beginning of his career he was dismissed as a man who wrote about bad Catholics mdash the whiskey priest The Power and the Glory Sarah The End of the Affair

Always try to do too much must be taken as one of Salman Rushdie's mantras and he certainly lives up to it here This sprawling story flashes back and forth from pre-World War II Strasbourg to present-day Los Angeles touchesat least fleetinglyon every major world crisis from the Holocaust to

Many consider Karl Rahner one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the past century Indeed he has been deemed a contemporary father of the church Now Rahner has the honor of a volume in the prestigious Cambridge Companion series The Rahner volume has been edited most capably by Declan Marmion

Everything about this book is elegant Embossed printing on the book jacket fits exquisitely the beautiful rendering of a medieval painting of a youthful bejeweled Mary Magdalene Equally appealing is the typeset and book design Instead of footnote numbers cluttering the text scholarly notes appe

The distinguished social historian William H Chafe author of significant studies of civil rights the women rsquo s movement and liberalism considers in Private Lives Public Consequences how the personal becomes political Starting with the old-fashioned conviction that individual leaders make a