Eugene Taylor is a clinical psychologist lecturer at Harvard Medical School and senior psychologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital He has previously written on William James and consciousness as well as spiritual healing and has been involved in a variety of oriental cult groups He brings

Brave novelist Ron Hansen In Mariette in Ecstasy 1991 he entered the mind of a contemplative nun with bleeding stigmata In Atticus 1996 he looked into the paternal love of a 67-year-old Colorado cattleman pursuing his estranged son in Mexico Now in Hitler rsquo s Niece he takes on the young

When the poet Hart Crane jumped from a ship to his death in the waters of the Caribbean on an April morning in 1932 alarmed crewmembers threw life preservers into the water after him Their rescue effort was not only futile but also ironic since Crane rsquo s father had invented the Life Saver can

John Updike's reflection on faith and writing upon his reception of America's Campion Medal in 1997.

Michael S. Dukakis delivered this address to the Kenna Club at Santa Clara University in California on Feb. 28, 1997.

The book grapples with the biggest of issues: the meaning of life, the problem of evil and the value of praying to a God who seems only rarely to intervene in human affairs.