A meditation on sainthood and Sammy Esposito
As a young boy, I was captivated by baseball stars, and I asked my Dad if a particular player was good. It may have been Sammy Esposito of the White [...]
Book review: “A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” by Julian Barnes
I thoroughly enjoyed A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes for its lively and witty storytelling, its multiplicity of writing styles and its refusal to [...]
Book review: “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar” by Simon Sebag Montefiore
It might be helpful to think of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar as akin to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Except that, when Abraham [...]
Book review: “Everest 1953” by Nick Conefrey
The scribbled telegram text, sent by messenger from the top of Mount Everest, was bleak — but also a bit odd. Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop [...]
“Marriage Song” by Patrick T. Reardon
We exult at the joining of young lives. We dance the dance of joy. This is a time of merriment. This is a time of wonder. Who will argue at [...]
Book review: “The Long War” by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
When Roberta Golding first shows up in The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, she’s described as “a dark, unsmiling girl of about fifteen.” Nothing too unusual in [...]
The Woven Lives of a Parish
As a parallel to the story I wrote for National Catholic Reporter in July about St. Gertrude Church and the death of our longtime religious education director, I did a [...]
Book review: “Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song” by David Margolick
In early 1939, at Café Society, a rare integrated New York City night club, Billie Holiday first sang “Strange Fruit.” It was, writes David Margolick, a shocking, stunning, visceral song [...]
Book review: “Shalako” by Louis L’Amour
Louis L’Amour died in 1988 at the age of 80. In his long life as a writer, he published 105 novels and other books, almost all of them westerns or [...]