People of the Book
A Blog about Book Publishing from a Catholic Perspective

Conan O’Brien explains why the iPhone is the product of the year.

Here is an excerpt from one of Flannery O’Connor’s letters to her friend Betty Hester, which were unsealed recently. It’s a response to Hester’s revelations of tragedies in her life, including seeing her mother commit suicide at age 13:

Compared to what you have experienced in the way of radical misery, I have never had anything to bear in my life but minor irritations — but there are times when the worst suffering is not to suffer, and the worst affliction, not to be afflicted. Job’s comforters were worse off than he was, though they did not know it. If in any sense my knowing your burden can make your burden lighter, then I am doubly glad I know it. You were right to tell me, but I’m glad you didn’t tell me until I knew you well. Where you are wrong is in saying that you are the history of horror. The meaning of the redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history, and nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history.

(HT: Maude Newton)

Francis of Assisi is the most beloved of saints. The “little poor man” is acclaimed as the apostle of peace, natural living, the environment, ecumenism, and social justice. He is universally admired for his generosity and radical courage to live the gospel to the fullest. Popular Catholic tradition applauds him as the alter Christus—the human being who most closely resembles Jesus himself.

Yet Francis (like Jesus) is a deeply paradoxical figure. He is a model for holiness, yet most Christians cannot—and should not—imitate him. Francis gave up everything and took to the road with a band of vagabond followers who did odd jobs and begged for their food and lodging. The vast majority of Christians are called to work in the world, marry and raise families, and be good neighbors and friends.

The tendency, then, is to sentimentalize Francis. Or so thought the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis. He believed we forget about Francis’ fierce, uncompromising radicalism and remember him as a meek and gentle wanderer who loved children and animals and preached universal love. The saint who thunders through the pages of Kazantzakis’s novel Saint Francis is drunk with the love of God. “I want more, more,” he prays. God answers by calling Francis to a life of radical poverty and deprivation. “You know how a lion seizes a hare and bangs him playfully against the ground, don’t you?” Francis asks a friend. “Well, God has seized me in the same way. . . . I am writhing in God’s claws and cannot escape.”

The novel depicts a restless saint. Kazantzakis’s Francis is not the calm and undisturbed saint of legend, preaching to the animals, but a man tempted and weary, searching for spiritual peace in a world of evil and war. Kazantzakis depicts the spiritual battle as the endless strife between the flesh and the spirit. He recounts Francis’ bitter wanderings over Europe and the Holy Land and his struggle against complacent and entrenched men in the church that finally led to the founding of the Franciscan order.

We see Francis through the eyes of his companion, Brother Leo—a cheerful monk, happy with wine and good food, who faithfully follows the saint whom he cannot fully understand. The “faithful friend” is a literary device, employed by writers from Cervantes to Tolkien, that enables the author to convincingly depict an extraordinary figure caught up in a transcendent quest. Kazantzakis’s Francis goes beyond the normal categories. A bandit says of him, “This fellow isn’t a lunatic, he’s a saint.” Another replies, “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

Kazantzakis’s portrait of Francis is deeply personal. The author thought that human beings were mired in insignificance but could grow spiritually through great struggle. “From within this human mire, divine songs have welled up, great ideas, violent loves, an unsleeping assault full of mystery,” he wrote in his personal credo. No wonder Francis of Assisi appealed to him.

At one point in the novel, Francis tells Brother Leo of witnessing a Passion play in Assisi, and the dissonance he experienced as a child discovering that the actor playing Christ was indeed only an actor and had not been crucified at all: “Now I’ve grown older, Brother Leo, I’ve grown older, and I do understand. Instead of being crucified, I simply think about crucifixion. Is it possible, Brother Leo, that we too are actors?”

Order the book here.

In a key moment in North of Hope, the richest and most ambitious of Jon Hassler’s twelve novels, Father Frank Healy stands at the pulpit at Sunday Mass and can think of nothing to say. His mind is blank. He’s paralyzed by a void within him. His is not a God-sent speechlessness, like Zechariah’s in the New Testament, but rather a symptom of a profound soul-sickness. Frank calls it “my big leak.” His spirit is draining away, drip by drip. His worried bishop packs him off to his childhood parish in the small town of Linden Falls, in northern Minnesota, for rest and, hopefully, renewal.

This crisis comes upon Frank a good fifteen years into his priesthood. The first part of North of Hope narrates crucial events in Frank’s life a quarter century earlier in Linden Falls, when he was in high school. He was a pious boy, apparently heading smoothly toward a priestly vocation, when a beautiful, vivacious girl named Libby Girard moved to town. Frank was infatuated; he was struck by the conviction that she was “the one.” But Frank and Libby never connected in a lasting way. They moved in very different directions: Frank to the seminary, Libby to a reckless marriage.

Back in Linden Falls twenty-five years later, a wounded Frank finds Libby again. She is living on a nearby Native American reservation with her third husband, a corrupt physician named Tom. Libby’s life is in chaos. She reaches out to Frank. “Is she the one?” he wonders.

In the hands of a lesser novelist, this dangerous material could be the setup for a tale of healing through sex. Instead, Jon Hassler makes it into a subtle story of midlife regeneration. It’s wintertime in northern Minnesota, and in this frigid setting, a cold and menacing reality descends on Frank, Libby, and the other people in their lives. They are forced to deal with corruption, crime, addiction, mental illness, and other ugliness. As they do, warmth creeps in.

North of Hope relates a serious story, but the world of the novel is full of vivid characters, some of them odd, many likable, all recognizable. There’s Toad Majerus, a dwarf bartender who makes his own difficult choice toward the story’s end; Caesar Pipe, the trustee at Frank’s mission at the reservation, who hates any kind of confrontation; and Monsignor Adrian Lawrence, Frank’s kindly old pastor, whose nickname is “Loving-Kindness,” for the phrase that recurs in all his sermons. One of Monsignor Lawrence’s pious habits is praying for the souls of deceased celebrities. One morning, Frank interrupts him at prayer:

“Good morning, Adrian.”

“Ah, Frank my boy, look here. Did you know that Bing Crosby, Ethel Waters, and Guy Lombardo all got away from us in the same year?”

Frank took the magazine and scanned the pictures. “And Groucho Marx.”

Adrian chuckled.

“And Gary Gilmore,” Frank added.

Adrian frowned. “Yes, executed. Let’s hope our Lord is healing him with his loving-kindness.”

Ultimately, North of Hope is a drama of the consequences of choices. Frank and Libby both suffer from the consequences of past choices. The crises they face present them with new choices, one of which is to flounder in regret and self-loathing or reach for hope. They both begin the story in a bleak spiritual place somewhere “north of hope.” They end in another, warmer place, strengthened by hard choices and enriched by genuine love.

Order the book here.

Francois Mauriac begins his novel Vipers’ Tangle with an unusual preface. He asks the reader to find “the strength of mind, and the courage, to follow this story to the end.” He hopes the reader will “feel pity and be moved” by the predicament of the man who tells his story in the novel. And Mauriac hints that the story is not as bleak as it may seem. There is, he writes, “a radiance” to be found there.

The radiance is there, to be sure. Vipers’ Tangle is a remarkable story of redemption. The grace that visits the main character leads to a conversion that is both dramatic and convincing. It’s credible, both spiritually and dramatically, because it’s realistic. Mauriac’s character is doomed because he has made terribly bad choices. His reprieve doesn’t make everything well. And it requires him to make choices to undo some of the misery he has created for others.

Vipers’ Tangle is a novel in the form of a long letter. The writer is Monsieur Louis, a wealthy, embittered miser in declining health, estranged from his family, who compares his heart to “a nest of vipers.” He loathes his wife and children and plans to disinherit them. They will discover this after his death, along with the long letter, which he is writing in order to express his contempt for virtually everyone, including, and especially, himself.

Remarkably, the letter turns into something else. Louis expresses copious scorn and hatred at first (this is probably why Mauriac in his preface urged the reader to stick with his story). But Louis is an honest man, and he gradually recognizes the web of self-delusion that entangles him. His letter becomes the instrument of his liberation. He sees how he has become consumed by resentment, which is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die. Louis stops blaming his wife and children, parents, the Church, and business associates for his misery and admits his own role.

Money had become the most important thing in Louis’ life. “It is my only protection,” he writes. His plot to disinherit his family was his most malicious act. Freedom comes to him when he gives up his plan and relinquishes his considerable fortune to his children. “It was borne in on me at that moment that my hatred was dead, and dead, too, my desire for reprisals,” he writes.

Louis comes to this understanding by writing his letter—the novel that the reader is reading. This makes Vipers’ Tangle something of an artistic tour de force. The lesson that Louis takes away is the joyous realization that his life has been redeemed in the end. “I must never stop telling myself that it is never too late,” he writes. It is never too late — a profound spiritual truth, which has seldom been explored more deeply than in Vipers’ Tangle.

Order the book here.

HARDCOVERS

1. Celebration of Discipline, 25th Anniversary Edition
Richard Foster. HarperOne

2. Hebrews
Alan C. Mitchell. Liturgical Press

3. Religious Literacy
Stephen Prothero. HarperOne

4. The Rhythm of Life
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Fireside

5. Crossing the Desert
Robert J. Wicks. Ava Marie Press

6. Amazing Grace
Eric Metaxas. HarperOne

7. My Life with the Saints
James Martin. Loyola Press

8. The Seven Levels of Intimacy
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Fireside

9. Perfectly Yourself
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Ballantine

10. The Mundelein Psalter
The Liturgical Institute, Douglas Maris, Hillenbrand Books
Paperbacks

PAPERBACKS

1. Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

2. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB Publishing

3. The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

4. Handbook for Today’s Catholic
A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication. Liguori

5. The Great Divorce
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

6. The Sacrament of Charity
Pope Benedict XVI. Pauline Books & Media/USCCB Publishing

7. Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Libreria Editrice Vaticania/USCCB Publishing

8. The Return of the Prodigal Sun
Henri J.M. Nouwen. Doubleday

9. Day by Day: The Notre Dame Prayer Book for Students, Revised
Thomas McNally, William George Storey. Ave Maria Press

10. United States Catholic Catechism for Adults
USCCB Publishing
© 2007 Catholic Book Publishers Association

Hundreds of readers eagerly took part in the UK Guardian’s Infuriating Phrases Competition, a challenge to pack as many annoying cliches as possible into one paragraph. Read the winners here, including this:

The Trust are committed to sharing best practice and passionate about facilitating appropriate skills through workshops and learning events around these issues across the piece. Monitoring using a web-based toolkit will empower users to drill down to assess local needs interactively. Stakeholders will be fully engaged in a consultation exercise breaking down barriers, pushing the envelope towards a seamless, one-stop shop service. Safety and value for money will be paramount so we are investing a funding stream to put in place a supportive multidisciplinary team to head up this exciting upcoming project, provide local ownership and robust clinical governance. Doing nothing is not an option: subject to independent review lessons will be learnt, accountability made transparent to commissioners, providers, and service-users to ensure that this tragedy will never happen again.

Book publishers are starting to take note of the marketing potential of social networking websites that connect people according to their taste in books. Several hundred thousand readers belong to such sites. They review books, and create networks of like-minded readers. Publishers are interested because the sites are an increasingly important way for readers to learn about new books. Here is a recent Christian Science Monitor article about them.

Random House has begun to send free copies of new novels to members of librarything.com in exchange for short reviews.

Other social networking websites include Shelfari.com, What’s On My Bookshelf, and Goodreads.com.

Last Tuesday, the baseball gods blessed Justin Verlander. The 24-year-old Tigers right-hander pitched a no-hitter against the Milwaukee Brewers. I don’t watch too many Tigers games on television from beginning to end, but I happened to catch this one from the first pitch (a strike) to last (an 0-2 curve that J. J. Hardy lifted to Magglio Ordonez in right for the last out in the ninth, the twenty-seventh batter that Verlander retired without a hit). Bless the light schedule that allowed this indulgence of TV watching.

Every fan dreams of seeing a no-hitter. It represents the ultimate accomplishment in baseball, perhaps in all of sports. The pitcher is by far the most important player on the field (“Ninety percent of the game is half pitching,” said Yogi Berra), and the heart of the game is the mano-a-mano contest between pitcher and batter, usually an exquisitely balanced one (“Good pitching will always beat good hitting – and vice versa,” said Berra another time). A no-hitter is the pitcher’s complete mastery of this contest with batters. Verlander dominated. He struck out 12 Brewers, and many others were fortunate to get enough wood on one of his pitches to ground it weakly to an infielder. Still, for all his excellence, Verlander was lucky. Three outs came on exceptional defensive plays.

Tuesday was a great night for Verlander and the Tigers. Frustration and worry returned Wednesday. The bullpen coughed up a lead in the ninth and the Brewers won. The Tigers lost again Thursday with poor pitching and bad hitting. Yet the Tigers are still second in the AL Central division, a game or two behind Cleveland. The season is long and full of surprises.

Before I went to Rome several years ago, my old college classics professor warned me about how difficult it would be to imagine what the ancient city looked like based on the random collection of ruins we see today. John Benson was right, of course. It’s too bad John didn’t live to see Rome Reborn 1.0, a colossal 3D digital model of what Rome looked like on June 21, 320 A.D., at the height of Rome’s imperial zenith.

The model, 10 years in the making, was constructed by the University of Virginia and its partners. It gives a fly-by view of 700 exteriors and 30 interiors of ancient buildings. Take a look at some of the amazing video clips on the project’s spiffy Rome Reborn website.

Francis Chisholm, the humble priest who is the hero of A. J. Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom, was the product of a unique Catholic culture that grew over generations and vanished with stunning speed in the decade following Vatican Council II. The look, values, and singular ways of thinking are recorded in books like the much-loved The Keys of the Kingdom, one of the most popular Catholic novels of the twentieth century.

The story of Francis Chisholm, a Scottish orphan turned missionary priest in prerevolutionary China, reads well today, many years after its ecclesiastical and social context changed completely. The story yields clues about the strengths of the pre-Vatican II church, as well as its weaknesses.

The glory of this church was its ability to produce men like Francis Chisholm. The boy Francis grows up in the crucible of Protestant-Catholic hostility in turn-of-the-century Scotland. His parents are killed by an anti-Catholic mob, and the woman he loves commits suicide, yet Francis resists bitterness. He becomes a priest and departs as a young man for China, where he becomes an exemplary missionary. Francis’s many adventures in China make up the bulk of the novel’s story, but the book’s center of gravity is Francis himself. He is a dedicated, creative, unfailingly humble, and self-effacing priest. The pre-Vatican II church produced many like him.

The weaknesses of this church are also on display in the novel. Lay Catholics are docile and lukewarm. Spiritual life seems stale and formulaic. The clerical culture of the time is etched in acid. Priests and prelates, with the exception of Francis, are portrayed as rigid, ambitious, and deficient in charity. Francis’s fellow Catholic priests cause him as much trouble in the Chinese missions as hostile pagans and violent warlords do.

There are stereotypical elements to this part of the story, but the broader point is well taken. The church that produced Francis Chisholm had drifted from its roots. Renewal was needed.

The person of Francis Chisholm makes the novel appealing. A. J. Cronin portrays him as an essentially simple and winsome man, but there are ambiguous aspects of his character. He professes pacifist beliefs, yet he intervenes on one side of a battle between warlords, and his actions cause the deaths of dozens of men. He is troubled by the unbelief of a Scottish physician who works closely with him, yet he does not make an effort to convert him when the man is dying. When admonished about this, Francis replies, “God judges us not only by what we believe . . . but by what we do.” He is an outstanding example of evangelical humility, yet he believes himself to be prideful. At one point he scolds himself for his “incorrigibly rebellious nature.”

Saints talk like this. In this engaging tale of a magnificent good priest, Cronin seems to be suggesting that humility and dedication like Francis Chisholm’s are the real “keys of the kingdom” of God.

Buy the book here.

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards,
or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.

I am only a human being: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well,
that the statue in church lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore, call one person, anywhere on earth,
not me-after all I have some decency-
and allow me, when I look at that person,
to marvel at you.

–Czeslaw Milosz

Cosmas, or the Love of God is a remarkable novel on several accounts. It is a thoroughly absorbing story set in a place where not much happens (a monastery) about a problem that is difficult to dramatize (whether a man has a religious vocation). Surprisingly, it was written by a man who was neither a priest nor a monk. Pierre de Calan was a prominent Paris banker with six children and eighteen grandchildren when he wrote this wholly convincing account of monastic life. It was his first novel. He was sixty-six years old when he published it. No wonder the book and its author created a stir in Paris literary circles when it was published in 1977.

But de Calan’s most notable accomplishment was writing a book that addressed spiritual questions that are profoundly important to nearly everyone. Does God call us to a particular way of life? How do we know this? What do we do when we can’t live the life we think God is calling us to?

Cosmas asks these questions in the context of a religious vocation. But they can be asked of other states of life as well. Indeed, we struggle with them in connection with commitments to careers and jobs, friendships, marriages, and relationships of all kinds. Does unhappiness mean that we should leave? Or is fidelity and perseverance the answer?

This is the dilemma facing Cosmas, a young man with a painful family background who comes to the Trappist monastery at La Trappe convinced that God is calling him to spend his life as a member of that community. Many signs point to this. And he is a happy and contented novice for many months.

Then problems arise. The community supports itself by farming and raising livestock, but Cosmas finds it unseemly that the monks expend so much time and energy on the business end of running a monastery. Even more troubling, Cosmas seems to be offended by the humanity of the monks. One sneaks food from the common pantry. Another loses his temper. They repent of their lapses, but Cosmas can’t get over it.

Cosmas is suited for the monastic life in many ways, and he is not entirely wrong to object to some aspects of it, but he sinks into gloom. He leaves for a time, returns, and leaves again. He is unhappy living at La Trappe, and unfulfilled away from it. He remains convinced that God is calling him to live as a monk.

“Was Cosmas really called to religious life? No other question has ever disturbed me so much,” writes Father Roger, the wise novice master and the narrator of the story. Father Roger embodies the second part of the book’s title. He is the foil to Cosmas—patient where the young monk is restless and demanding, forgiving where Cosmas is harsh.

Father Roger reveals early on in the story that Cosmas’s distress ultimately proved fatal. When the winter snows melt after Cosmas has been away from the monastery, the young man’s body is found in the woods nearby. He had apparently been returning for one last try and had been caught in a blizzard. In the end, the La Trappe community itself settles the question of whether Cosmas belongs among them. Cosmas is buried in the community cemetery—home at La Trappe at last.

To order the book, click here.

Fr. Jim Martin, SJ, author of My Life with the Saints, gave a hilarious luncheon talk on the subject of “Joy and Laughter in the Christian life” at the recent RBTE trade show Among his stories was this anecdote about Pope John XXIII:

Before becoming Pope, Cardinal Roncalli was the papal nuncio to France. One evening he attended an elegant dinner party in Paris. He was seated across from a beautiful woman who wore a dress with a plunging neckline, exposing much cleavage.

Early in the party, a man seated next to the cardinal leaned over and asked, “doesn’t it embarrass you that everyone is looking at that woman’s cleavage?”

No no,” said the cardinal. “No one’s looking at her cleavage. Everyone’s looking at me to see if I’m looking at her cleavage.”

Christianity Today announces its 2007 book awards. The winner in fiction is Dwelling Places by my friend and colleague Vinita Hampton Wright.

New trend in publishing: large-type books for boomers. “More and more middle-aged consumers are looking for large-print books but don’t want to admit that they need large-print books.”

A good week for Mike Aquilina. His new book is published. An old book helps a reader connect with the Catholic Church. And another book gets a good review.

Reformed theologian Richard Mouw rethinks his skepticism about praying to the saints. “I may not feel the need for actual conversations with people who have halos around their heads. But I do need to know more of the stories about what they were like before they earned their halos.”

And finally, St. Augustine himself opens a profile on MySpace. He has 85 friends already. Stick around long enough to listen to the very cool audio track he chose.

Greg Erlandson’s OSV editorial “Orthodoxy’s Dry Drunks” has triggered some great discussion in the blogosphere. Did he label people unfairly? Can the “dry drunk” phenomenon be seen on the Catholic left as well? Is he singling out bloggers for criticism? Is he overlooking real problems in the church?

If you’re interested, and I hope you are, look at the discussion on the dotCommonweal blog here.

Matthew Lickona is an Erlandson critic.

And Erlandson himself has something to say in the comments on our earlier post on the subject. Keep scrolling.

This topic happens to be one of my hot buttons. I hate intra-Catholic bickering. I’m quick to deplore it and slow to forgive it. It’s a near occasion of sin for me.

This observation from a dotCommonweal commenter struck me as an example of the charity we all need:

While we progressive Catholics may see ourselves marginalized in many ways, it is instructive to note that conservative Catholics also feel marginalized…and not without reason. In many zones of American Catholic life our voices have been ascendant for years. We’re living in a fool’s paradise if believe all the pain was inflicted by ‘them’ on ‘us.’ It just ain’t that simple. Many conservative Catholics have been collateral damage in our march toward renewal and exasperation with/contempt for their views are all too common among us.

Author and uber-blogger Amy Welborn has a perceptive post about the challenges of Catholic book publishing, including this point about the absence of trusted “gatekeepers” who can tell readers what’s good to read:

Gatekeepers are key. Or, in Long Tail terms, “filters.” Institutions, individuals who are trusted, well, filters of what is good and worth reading. In Catholic terms, the primary filters today are EWTN and the small galaxy of professional conference/workshop circuits, from catechists to teachers to priests to lay ministers, two “forces” which diverge mightily on the books that will be impacted by their support, but which explains why a typical Catholic best seller’s list will have, on the one hand Ron Rolheiser, and on the other, Scott Hahn. A filter that’s on the rise, in my opinion, are the burgeoning Catholic family, women’s and men’s conferences. But there is really not any cohesive, integrated filtering force that most literate Catholics would look to, no matter where they fall “ideologically.”

Read the whole thing.

Marge Simpson learns that different faiths mean a different afterlife.

A “dry drunk” is an alcoholic who doesn’t drink but who nevertheless behaves with bitterness, resentment, and anger. Greg Erlandson, publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, thinks that “dry drunk” accurately describes a number of “doctrinaire Catholics who hold all the ‘right’ positions and say all the ‘right’ things, yet exhibit an angry, sour attitude that seems the opposite of Christian joy or an evangelizing spirit.”

They do not so much engage culture as demand its unconditional surrender, and they take greater satisfaction in elaborating on sin and its punishments than on the beauty of the Savior. They tend to be all Inferno and little Paradiso. . . .

The blogosphere has become a veritable catch basin of these folks. Unedited, unrestrained and unhappy with the state of the Church and the world, they obsessively chronicle every twisted phenomenon, every perversion, every disillusioning anecdote. They fancy themselves proclaiming truth to power — the emperor is wearing no clothes. The trouble is, they can’t take their eyes off the emperor.

We need prophets, says Erlandson, “but I find the most effective ones are those who manifest God’s love most eloquently.”

Read the whole thing.

Religion was the strongest growth segment in publishing in 2006, according to figures released by the Book Industry Study Group. Sales of religious trade books were up 6.7 percent over 2005, to a total of 197.3 million copies. Net revenue increased even more — up 9.2 percent, to $1.65 billion.

For the whole book industry, unit sales were almost flat — up only 0.5 percent to 3.09 billion units. But higher cover prices boosted net revenue by 3.2 percent, to $35.7 billion from $34.6 billion.

The Catholic Press Association handed out 103 book awards in 24 categories at its recent convention in Brooklyn. Orbis Books led all publishers with 16 awards, followed by Paulist Press with 11, Liturgical Press with 10, and Crossroad with 8. Go here for a complete list of the winners.

The first place winner in the category “Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith” went to Liz Kelly’s May Crowning, Mass, and Merton, published by Loyola Press. The judges called the book “a joyful, heartfelt examination of Catholic life by a woman who has embraced every manifestation of it, from kneelers in church to the Eucharist, from particular prayers to the writing of such diverse authors as Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton.”

The winner in the Paperback Spirituality category was Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom by Albert Nolan, published by Orbis. The judges said that “Nolan traces the process of imitating the spirituality of Jesus in the world of today, and leads us through the stages of personal transformation.”

The winner in the Hardcover Spirituality category was My Life with the Saints by James Martin, S.J., published by Loyola. The judges said that “Martin understands that the saints can be wonderful mentors and guides, and in this way he breathes new life into the concept of ‘devotion,’ which has fallen recently on hard times.”