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The Summer Reading List, 2023 edition

Good books about Israel, the virtues, the culture wars, journalism, and more.

(Image: Ben White | Unsplash.com)

Few of the following qualify as “beach reading;” they all qualify as good reading.

In graduate school, I was informed that there was no such thing as “biblical theology,” only textual analysis. Bishop Robert Barron demonstrates what nonsense that was, and is, in The Great Story of Israel: Election, Freedom, Holiness, a book that nourishes both mind and soul.

In The Virtues, John Garvey, former president of the Catholic University of America, shares the wisdom by which he reminded CUA students that genuine “higher education” means “deeper formation” as well as “more information:” the perfect gift to anyone entering college or university this fall.

The culture wars continue. Three recent volumes help prepare 21st-century defenders of the faith for the work ahead — Religious Freedom after the Sexual Revolution, by leading pro-life legal scholar Helen M. Alvaré; The Coming Christian Persecution: Why Things Are Getting Worse and How to Prepare for What Is to Come, by Thomas D. Williams; and Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, by my estimable colleagues, Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis.

Don’t let a formidable title — La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Vignerot, Cardinal Richelieu’s Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France — deter you from this impressive debut book by Bronwen McShea, a brilliant young historian who knows how to tell a story.

Lance Morrow, for decades one of the country’s most felicitous essayists, looks back affectionately on his early days as an ink-stained wretch — and draws some appropriately sharp contrasts to today’s knights of the keyboard — in a splendid memoir, The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism.

A few months before his centenary, Henry Kissinger sketched lessons for the 21st century from six of the history-makers of the 20th in Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, a book in which penetrating insight is leavened with tart wit (“The capacity for gratitude not being among de Gaulle’s most highly developed traits….”). The chapter on Konrad Adenauer “strategy of humility” is especially pertinent to today’s overheated politics.

Longtime Newsweek correspondent Andrew Nagorski continues the explorations into a dark period of history that he began with such page-turners as Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power and The Nazi Hunters with Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom: another example of popular historical writing at its best.

And while we’re on the subject of the most extensively discussed of all human conflicts, Ryszard Tyndorf of the Catholic University of Lublin has produced a massive, free-to-download monograph that should make a considerable difference to both Holocaust Studies and current controversies within Poland, with Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy: The Testimony of Survivors and Rescuers, available here.

The Roman Mass: from Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform, by Uwe Michael Lang of the London Oratory, will be primarily of interest to scholars. But it should be required reading for Internet combatants in the ongoing liturgy wars, who would thereby learn a thing or two about the evolution of the Roman Rite through what the author rightly calls “centuries of intense religious, social, and cultural transformations.”

Eduard Habsburg’s The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times is a love letter to his (extensive) family from one of its prominent contemporary members, and a winsome exploration of some of the lesser-known dramas of European history.

Gary and Grace Jansen won a well-deserved Christopher Award for their charming children’s book, Remember Us with Smiles — a beautifully illustrated celebration of family life that deserves a wide audience among your children and grandchildren.

While never descending into hagiography, William Inboden’s The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, and the World on the Brink sheds new light on the greatest American foreign policy success of the post-World War II period. Inboden’s analysis should be of particular interest to U.S. Catholic historians willing to challenge (and correct) the regnant celebratory narrative about the U.S. bishops’ involvement with nuclear weapons issues in the 1980s.

Given current confusions in American education, the category of “Classics Worth Re-Reading” is becoming the category of “Classics Worth Reading.” For those who’ve lost touch with their literary inheritance — or, worse, have been cheated out of it — let me suggest Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop as the beginning a fresh encounter with great American literature. I recently re-read it on site, so to speak, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was struck again by Cather’s limpid prose, sacramental sensibility and empathy with her characters.

(George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)


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About George Weigel 519 Articles
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

21 Comments

      • Calvinists can be worth reading. Plenty of Christian authors have had issues with the Catholic Church but they can still say things that are worthwhile & true even if we believe them incorrect or incomplete on others.

    • For the millionth time, not an appropriate recommendation for a Catholic website. Your conduct on this site is deeply sinful.

  1. Cheers for reminding us of Willa Cather’ s splendid work. Her. “Shadows on the Rock” about early French Canada is also well worth reading.

  2. Thank you for the shout out for Willa Cather. She’s one of my very favorite authors. I remember picking up a copy of “My Antonia” when I was a teenager & not being able to put it down for hours. Her descriptions of the Nebraska prairie & its pioneers were so vivid I can close my eyes now & still see those scenes from the pages of the book.

  3. I add my vote for all books by Willa Cather, including Desth Comes for the Archbishop, and join MrsCracker and Fran and author George Weigel in their recommendations.

    Death Comes for the Archbishop is a story based on two real-life, French Catholic missionaries, including the Archbishop, and their adventures in the American southwest, and the hardships they endured to carry the Gospel and the Sacraments half-way around the world, in a wild and very dangerous place.

    Willa Cather reveres the pioneers who risked all in venturing into the American west, and her books are a tribute to the virtues and courage of the men and women she memorialized.

    She is that rare writer who rewards her readers with writing that is as light as a feather, with a true story more gripping than any fiction, and a message about life and living that transcends time and space.

  4. This Weigel article now posted today for the first time -this morning- is dated June 14 2023 yet all the comments so far are dated June 7 2023.

    That’s how it shows on my side, right now. I have taken screen shots of the situation in case the CWR tech people need a confirmation.

  5. I’ll stick my neck out, along with Mrs. Cracker, and say a word in support of my favourite Calvinist writer, Carl Trueman.

    • Carl Trueman, despite his misguided admiration for Martin Luther, has indeed been a very strong voice in analyzing the culture war and demonstrating the flaws of wokie left ideology.

      One book that especially stands out for moi is his “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” (2020) that pinpoints how modern leftist ideology leads to the enslavement of minds and souls by its self-absorption with Sexual Libertinism, Radical Individualism, Identity Politics, and Personal Empowerment over Holiness.

    • Geez, Pastors Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, etc. can say some amazing spiritual things every now and then, but we need to mentally, emotionally and spiritually stay light years away from them while we pray for their conversion to the True Faith.

      My only suggestion in the Protestant world is late Presbyterian Pastor D. James Kennedy who never took time to attack the Catholic Church but solidly attacked the demons in the culture. We may have Protestant friends, even in books, but we should never make them our teachers. Never. Are we superior? No, never, but our Catholic Faith absolutely is.

      • Osteen, Meyer, and Hinn are worth avoiding altogether; if they do say something worthwhile, it’s almost by accident and not worth the time.

        In my experience (28 years a Fundamentalist/Evangelical), most books by Protestant pastors (especially TV preachers) are of little or no value. But–but!–there are numerous Protestant theologians, philosophers, and intellectuals worth readings. For instance: Craig Keener, Craig Evans, Michael Bird, JP Moreland, the late Charles Colson, Carl Trueman, and many more.

      • Some of the most moving things I’ve ever heard preached were by Protestants & by Protestants on Christian Radio. Disregarding everything written or preached by our separated brethren simply because they’re separated impoverishes us.

        A former pastor explained once that the Catholic Church has the entirety of Christ’s teachings. He said if it was like a pie, we have the whole pie, other Christian communities have a varying number of slices. And from my experience, some of our separated brothers & sisters do more with a slice or two of that pie than we might with the entirety. We have the full teaching of Christ, but we can take that for granted & not incorporate it fully into our daily lives. Nor share it with others as our evangelical separated brethren do.

      • I have read many Joyce Meyer books and I dare to differ…. she is a strong woman that shares her experiences during her growing up years of abuse from her father, but has forgiven him and she has helped so many have a positive attitude instead of being negative like so many are. I am a devote Catholic but I will say God puts people in our lives that may not be Catholic but are very God loving people. Not everyone is brought up Catholic.. but have God in them, as I feel Joyce does. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it! God bless all.

  6. John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, who was that other guy on the list of 17th century religious poets? Non-Catholics all, if I remember correctly. Products of their age. And solid Christians. We have much to learn from them.

    • Thank you so much for that Gilberta.
      George Hebert is one of my favorite poets & this poem put to music by Ralph Vaughn Williams is probably my favorite hymn. It’s deeply moving:

      ‘The Call’
      Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life;
      Such a Way as gives us breath,
      Such a Truth as ends all strife,
      Such a Life as killeth death.

      Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength;
      Such a Light as shows a Feast,
      Such a Feast as mends in length,
      Such a Strength as makes his guest.

      Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart;
      Such a Joy as none can move,
      Such a Love as none can part,
      Such a Heart as joys in love.

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