Asma Uddin, a religious liberty lawyer and a fellow at the Aspen Institute, writes in her new book The Politics of Vulnerability about how American Muslims and conservative Christians can engage better to protect their religious freedoms.
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(REVIEW) Unlike any pope of the modern era, no one has been as controversial and polarizing as Francis. This new book tries to delve into what motivates this pontiff and his mission.
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Dr. Jenny Taylor meets an “accompanist” with soul in her English village: the author Maxine Green who with co-author Dr. Phil Daughtry just published the book “The Art of Accompanying” about the life of one’s soul and the delight in being still.
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(REVIEW) Church historian Massimo Faggioli's new book “Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States” offers background of the three previous times a Catholic candidate has been the nominee for the highest office in the land and why Biden's candidacy and now presidency comes at a particularly fraught moment for not just American Catholicism but the global church.
Read MoreThe Rev. James Martin, one of the most famous Catholic priests in this country, has written a new book, Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, that focuses on helping Christians understand what it takes to have a relationship with God.
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(REVIEW) David Geisser’s new cookbook in time for the holidays, The Vatican Christmas Cookbook, offers up over 100 recipes from around the world.
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(EXCERPT) “Jesus. A World History,” by Markus Spieker, is both a biography of Jesus and a historical narrative of his influence across the world.
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(OPINION) That Pope Francis would put his name on a book — written by a British author — criticizing the United States, its media and politics without understanding the First Amendment is a major shortfall of the project. There is also more to this book that the mainstream secular press did not highlight — like the pope’s staunch opposition to abortion.
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Wood joins a chorus of historians who see the New York Times’s 1619 Project as a failed effort to reframe American history and with “1620” makes the case that the Mayflower Compact inaugurated the American experiment in democracy. “If the 1619 Project were a term paper, any knowledgeable, fair-minded teacher would give it an F,” Wood writes. The project’s lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize.
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Fourteen years after her death, Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel “The Parable of the Sower” hit national bestseller lists for eerily predicting this year’s dystopian-feeling chaos. Her invented religion Earthseed, along with her identity as a Black woman, sets her apart from other science fiction writers who often imagine a faith-less future.
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(REVIEW) Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005 for her novel Gilead. Jack is the fourth book in her Gilead series that goes back in time to show Jack’s point of view in an interracial friendship and forbidden romance that reflect God’s love.
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(REVIEW) While 83-year-old Pope Francis is in good health, that hasn’t stopped speculation over who will come next. In his new book, author George Weigel examines the problems affecting the church and what the next pope will need to do in order to address them. Think of it like a very long to-do memo for the next head of the Catholic church.
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(EXCERPT) Blood and Oil , by award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters Justin Scheck and Bradley Hope, shows how a rift in the world’s most powerful ruling family, Saudi Arabian royalty, produced Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a charismatic leader with a ruthless streak.
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(REVIEW) Norman Lebrecht’s Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 paints a complex portrait of Jewish figures and their relationships to each other. He points out that their brilliance and influence was the result of their collective anxiety.
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Read the prologue of “The Road From Raqqa: A Story Of Brotherhood, Borders And Belonging”, a non-fiction story about two brothers from Raqqa, Syria.
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(REVIEW) Traditionalists versus progressives is the major plot of a new novel called The Order by writer Daniel Silva, who puts these sinister inner workings that highlight this modern-day Vatican political power struggle — albeit a fictional account in this case — into greater focus.
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(REVIEW) The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates by the National Catholic Register's longtime Rome correspondent Edward Pentin delves into the lives of the cardinals most likely to follow Francis.
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(REVIEW) Jimmy Dykes’ new book isn’t just one long series of motivational speeches. Instead, he focuses on how people can strengthen their relationships with one another — the perfect recipe for any team’s success — along with serving God.
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(REVIEW) Author Tom Holland does not write about the life of Jesus and never deals with the Resurrection narratives, but they were vital to the rise of Christianity, and Holland’s refusal to understand this most central aspect of Christianity is where “Dominion” misses the point from the very beginning. The book only engages with Jesus as an uncanny character unique in world literature who happened to start a religion that was systematized by the Paul of Tarsus.
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A new book looks at a variety of female personalities who exerted influence over the centuries. The Vatican may be a male-dominated system, but Lynda Telford’s account has enough history and sleaze in it to make for a gripping Netflix series. What this book does very well is shift the spotlight away from men and places it on the women and their oft-ignored influence on the papacy and Christianity as a whole throughout Europe.
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