Finding books right before your eyes on the sidewalk: this is one of those phenomena you can encounter almost daily in New York City. Here in Manhattan I have had the good fortune to come across both paperbacks and hardbacks in my comings and goings. If you are an undiscriminating book lover like me

Our Christmas gift to subscribers this year is our new Web site. We are very excited about it and believe you will find it informative and useful. Come visit us at: www.americamagazine.org. On our Web pages, you will find practically everything that is currently printed in the paper edition of Ameri

Behind the cheerful bustle of New York City's Chinatown, with its outdoor stalls filled with exotic fruits and vegetables, lie deep-seated problems that reflect the difficult lives of Chinese immigrants who manage to find their way to lower Manhattan. I had an opportunity to hear of some of thes

As the church looks for new ways to respond to the needs of poor immigrants in urban areas like New York City, are there lessons we can learn from efforts to help earlier arrivals? Although The Godfather might lead us to believe that joining the Corleone family was the dream of every young Italian i

In the summer of 1219, Francis of Assisi traveled to Egypt with the hope of converting the Saracens from Islam to Christianity. He stayed with some crusaders, who told him his mission was impossible and could easily cost him his life. Francis ignored the warnings and managed to secure an audience wi

My mind stopped somewhere short of Washington’s resolute war planners. The equation of a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eyeI have no heart for it. Nor does my mind close around the vague and faceless enemies that we have sent our aircraft carriers to pursue in the Middle Eastor farther east