Paula Huston has much in common with Kathleen Norris and Henri Nouwen two major stars in the constellation of contemporary writers on the spiritual journey That rsquo s good company for Huston and good news for us At least on the evidence of The Holy Way Practices for a Simple Life Huston appea

George Santayana should have warned us those who can remember the past but do so obsessively are just as condemned to repeat it as those who forget The 1999 Nobel laureate G nter Grass has been prophetically attacking and mourning the horrors of 20th-century German history since the publication

Randy Newman has a tune called God rsquo s Song That rsquo s Why I Love Mankind that can send a shiver down the spine of all believers even those who believe we would be better off without belief In it a malicious God sits in his heaven world-weary and sarcastic Man means less to me he says

If war is hell a literary corollary might be that every society touched by warfare needs its own version of Virgil or Dante to journey to that hell and return to tell the tale In her collection of short stories Anthonia Kalu plays such a role with respect to the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967-70 Thi

For Eugene Kennedy Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago 1928-96 is an exemplar of the paschal mystery ldquo Joseph Bernardin rsquo s life tells us what happens when a man accepts the destiny that is given to few on behalf of us who are the many to recreate the central motif of Christian spirit

Ernest Hemingway rsquo s famous comment about taking up a collection and sending John O rsquo Hara off to Yale once for all may have been a cheap shot but it was one O rsquo Hara rsquo s boorish streak nearly begged for In his unorthodox yet enlightening new biography Geoffrey Wolff makes the case