“The Best Books I Read in 2024”

For a rare and enjoyable combination of lucid prose, discerning historical insight, and firm and measured moral and political judgment, see the articles, essays, and reviews collected in John O’Sullivan’s Sleepwalking Into Wokeness: How We Got Here (Academica Press, 2024). Whether writing on the “cultural revolution” that is wokeness, the transformation of liberal democracy into an ideology that is neither liberal nor democratic, “the heroic age of conservatism,” or anti-totalitarian titans such as Cardinal Mindszenty, Robert Conquest, or Jeane Kirkpatrick, O’Sullivan instructs in an artful and humane way.

Lastly, let me recommend Sean McMeekin’s devastating dissection of the communist effort To Overthrow the World (Basic Books, 2024). As McMeekin shows with great learning and in lively prose in his account of “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism” (in the words of the subtitle of the book, there is nothing remotely noble or humane in the effort to create an alternative reality at odds with the order of things that has been bequeathed to us. Tyranny, terror, coercion, and mendacity are the “effectual truth” of Communism in theory as well as practice. This is a lesson that must be passed on to new generations if civilized liberty is to endure.

Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor Emeritus at Assumption University and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute

Joseph Martin:

Count me a fan of the impossibly prolix, compulsively readable Rod Dreher. His Living in Wonder did it again. Also wonder-full was the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. Twenty years in the making, the thing’s a beast. With a beauty of an intro essay by Jeffrey Morrow.

Although Rome “gave” the world the Bible, contemporary Catholic editions have for years stubbornly languished in a ghetto of second-rate production values. The arrival of Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Bible changes all that, instantly raising the bar on aesthetics. Volume IV: The Promised Land continues this project’s eye-popping excellence in typography and design. Hailed as a “cathedral in print,” it boasts gorgeous plates featuring Notre Dame’s Rose du Midi and the likes of Laurits Tuxen and Washington Allston. And commentary marked by measured judgments, deference to tradition, and a discernibly devotional tone. With three more volumes promised, shall we call this series a godsend? Let’s.

In September, I was tasked at last minute with teaching an art history class. I thankfully found unexpected some allies: a nun I’d forgotten I even knew (Sister Wendy’s History of Painting), John Hendrix (Drawing is Magic), and Nicholas Day (The Mona Lisa Vanishes).

On media matters, two noteworthy Allens landed on my radar: Roland (The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper) and John (Catholics and Contempt). One compelled me to unplug; the other, to play nice.

I dusted off John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope on its 30th anniversary and found a new appreciation for it with the passage of time. JPII called Latin ‘the splendid language,’ and I thought it paulum splendidum myself after perusing Maia Lee-Chin and Marta Bertello’s Et Cetera.

More:

Piers Paul Read’s History of the Catholic Church
G.K. Chesterton’s The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond
Avi Steinberg’s Lost World of the Book of Mormon
Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert
Coleman Hughes’ The End of Race Politics
Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke
Edith Schaeffer’s Common Sense Christian Living
Hilaire Belloc’s The Modern Traveler
C.H. Spurgeon’s Letters and Travels

Also the vaults of Touchstone Magazine, were I found unlikely odes to an Okie pastor (Preston Jones’ “Pastor Prime,”) and a tuba (S. M. Hutchens’ “Out of the Depth“).

In the listening room, I finally got to hear previously unreleased tracks from some favorite artists: producer Michael Omartian’s rendition of Amy Grant’s “House of Love,” and Jeff Buckley’s “Forget Her.” The highlight, though, was Sylvia’s “Knockin’ Around” (the mononymous singer from the 80s once sent me a handwritten Christmas card): “Words hang in the air as you wander about / But they’ll all burn away when the sun comes out.” I’d forgotten Nashville was ever that poetic.

Speaking of heydays, I got a kick out of Jonathan Jackson’s portrayal of Eddie DeGarmo in Unsung Hero. That film sent me back to revisit the artists on my shelf of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Among these was another one-name wonder: Mandisa, the exuberant vocalist we lost this year: “I think of Mary and the virgin birth / And I’m amazed at how much God thinks we are worth / That He would send His only Son to die / And sometimes Christmas makes me cry.”  Merry Christmas.

Joseph Martin is Associate Professor of Communication and Graphic Design at Montreat College.

Filip Mazurczak:

Two history books I read in 2024 deserve special mention. The first is Victor Sebestyen’s Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror. This biography is eminently engrossing; rather than merely presenting Lenin as a monster, Sebestyen tries to understand what exactly made him. The author argues that the famous revolutionary was a reaction against the autocratic Tsarist regime. Paradoxically, however, many of the unsavory features of life under the hammer and sickle, such as censorship, the assassinations of political opponents (Lenin’s own brother Sasha himself was hanged for plotting to kill the tsar), and the exile of dissidents to Siberia, were merely extreme forms of practices endemic to Tsarist rule. As Russia’s criminal war of aggression against Ukraine approaches the three-year mark, reading Sebestyen’s Lenin can lead to the depressing conclusion that perhaps only a miracle in the literal sense can eliminate Putinism, as authoritarianism and the wanton disrespect for human life have been constant features of Russian political culture throughout the centuries.

I also appreciated Alex J. Kay’s Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killings. Nazi Germany’s intended genocide of every single Jewish man, woman, and child was a singular tragedy among Hitler’s many killing sprees. While we must remember this distinction, we cannot overlook the fact that the victims of the Holocaust accounted for slightly less than half of the 13 million non-combatants murdered by the Third Reich. By putting the Holocaust into a broader context of Nazi Germany’s genocidal misanthropy, however, Kay reminds us of many of the overlooked groups also targeted by Hitler, such as the Roma, Polish intelligentsia, Soviet POWs, or people with disabilities.

The Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio’s Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators was fascinating. Orizio tracked down former autocrats of various ideological hues who were enjoying (because they experienced no consequences for their bloody rule and often lived comfortably, this seems an appropriate verb) their lives in retirement. They consented to be interviewed and were astoundingly frank. We learn, for example, that Ugandan dictator Idi Amin probably didn’t feast on human flesh, as popular rumor had it, but his paranoid cruelty makes the existence of such legends comprehensible. Orizio probed Polish communist leader Wojciech Jaruzelski to explain the strange paradox why he, born into an aristocratic family, educated by Catholic priests, and deported to Siberia by the NKVD during World War II, would become, in the words of Caspar Weinberger, “a Soviet general in a Polish uniform.” While Haiti is famously the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, its ousted dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier came to his interview with Orizio in a BMW, his wife having just gone shopping in Paris’ poshest shops.

I loved Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. Like St. Augustine, this Ivy-educated wordsmith, raised with little religious background (his father, in fact, was virulently anti-Catholic), was restless until his soul rested in God; he eventually became Catholic and entered a strict Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Filled with erudite references to literature and philosophy, Merton’s memoir traces his spiritual journey in an unputdownable way. I appreciated Merton’s convincing responses to timeless difficult questions of faith, such as those of hell (Merton writes that no one is forced to go to hell; God simply “ratif[ies] the decision” of those who have rejected Him) or theodicy (he notes that it is only thanks to the “merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us” that despite centuries of war and hatred humanity continually produces “men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity”).

Filip Mazurczak is a journalist, translator, and historian.

Fr. R. McTeigue, S.J.:

It was very difficult to make even a modest selection of books I read in 2024 that could qualify for a list of “Best of…” In my experience, at least when it comes to books, “Best” can mean so many things. I settled on two criteria for inclusion on this list. First, books I wanted to remember because of their uplifting beauty. Second, books I wanted to remember because of their disturbing information, such that I needed to adjust my worldview, my conscience, my priorities and my behavior.

In the first category:

On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology (Saint Bonaventure) I had never read much of Saint Bonaventure, even when I was in school, but this little work helped me to understand why he is called “the Seraphic Doctor.” It is sublime in its beauty, its order, its depth, its simplicity. It may be hard nowadays to imagine a book of philosophy that one would want to read in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, but this is such a book. I could teach a course and preach a retreat based on this little gem.

The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien) Among some Tolkien fans, this massive work sometimes elicits quips such as, “This is Tolkien working out Elven theology, if the Elves were Neo-Platonists.” That may be true, but it’s also not fair. This collection of stories is a grand display of a master storyteller and world builder practicing his craft. Even if one has no interest in The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings (Heaven forefend!), one would do well to sit down and let Tolkien cast his spell upon you.

In the second category:

The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry (Wendell Berry, edited by Paul Kingsnorth) I came to Berry through Kingsnorth. I’ve not read much of Kingsnorth’s written work, but his many interviews and lectures are fascinating. Kingsnorth is Berry’s heir apparent. As someone who spent most of his life in cities, I read Berry’s essays, alternating between longing and grimacing. I longed for his reverence and appreciation for nature and the cycle of life and death. I grimaced as he helped me to see how unhealthy and destructive thoughtless urbanization can be.

Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way (Derrick Jensen, et al.) This book was recommended by Kingsnorth in one of his lectures. It is a most disturbing book. Even if one puts parentheses around the controverted issues of “climate change/carbon emissions/methane” (as I do), the books evidence for just about everything else regarding the “Green Energy” movement is beyond dispute. The authors document what is done to mine lithium and then process the results into batteries. They document what is necessary to build wind turbines, dams and the like. Even if these forms of energy generation were as efficient as we would need them to be (and they’re not and they can’t be), it is beyond dispute that the manufacture and maintenance of these devices constitute environmental horrors of their own. The “Bright Green Lie” is that if we just repudiate fossil fuels and “go Green”, then we can maintain our present way of life without significant changes. This book shows that such a claim is demonstrably false.

Honorable mentions:  The Trial of Julian Assange (Melzer, Richards, et al.); One Nation, Under Blackmail, Vol. 1 (Whitney Alyse Webb); No God Next Door: Red Rule in Mexico and Our Responsibility (Michael Kenney, S.J.); The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism (Denis Fahey); Good Music, Sacred Music and Silence (Peter Kwasniewski); Just Stab Me Now (Jill Bearup)

Fr Robert McTeigue, SJ, is a member of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus and professor of philosophy and theology.

Sandra Miesel:

Non-fiction:

Lost Mirrors: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain. (2024). Watch Jew-hatred coalesce in a once more tolerant society in this unusual exhibition catalog co- sponsored by the Prado and the National Museum of Catalonia. I reviewed it here.

Red Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Enchantment and Meaning in a Secular Age. A thoughtful observer of social trends’ spiritual aspects, Dreher examines our world’s sad disenchantment and suggests remedies. I reviewed it here.

Thomas P. Hillman, Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many. (2023). This deep and sensitive analysis is one of the finest works of Tolkien criticism I’ve ever read.

Jenny Uglow, A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration. (2009). The Merry Monarch plays the mixed hand dealt him in this lively and sympathetic biography, packed with contemporary quotes and Illustrations.

Fiction:

Lois Lowry, the Giver Quartet: The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), Son (2012). Despite the absence of sex and bad language, Lowry’s Newbery Award winning The Giver was one of the most challenged books of its time. It presents a dystopia of enforced Niceness more horrifying than overt cruelty. What initially seems a work of post-apocalyptic science fiction turns more fantastic as the series unfolds. The quartet demonstrates that humans cannot flourish without interconnection, but sacrifice is inescapable when people love. Adult as well as young readers can appreciate the beauty and subtlety of Lowry’s writing. These are books for families to discuss together.

Manly Wade Wellman, John the Balladeer. (2023). David Drake, Old Nathan. 2^nd ed. (2013). This collection is the latest packaging of beloved stories originally published 1951-87. Wellman’s gracious wandering hero totes his silver-stringed guitar around the mountains of North Carolina where old time mystery and magic linger. After Wellman’s death in 1986, his friend and executor David Drake created a darker mirror image of John. Although his crotchety Old Nathan, Revolutionary War veteran and Tennessee “cunning man,” calls himself the Devil’s Master, his adventures trace an arc of personal redemption.

Sandra Miesel is an American medievalist and writer.

 

J.C. Miller:

I read some truly outstanding books in 2024. Harrison Scott Key’s How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told infuriated me; you should definitely read it. You’ll see glowing reviews of this book from serious literary critics. While I certainly laughed at the humor, many parts of the book just made me angry. This is the only book that prompted me to both pray for and send a note to the author. It’s a brutal, intriguing, and important story about marriage, adultery, and restoration. Even if you have my hostile reaction to it, you’ll find that it’s a book you must talk about.

John J. Bursch’s Loving God’s Children: The Church and Gender Ideology exceeded my expectations. Mr. Bursch is one of the top attorneys in the country and has litigated the most important contemporary gender ideology issues. The topic is not of particular interest to me; I understand that it’s important, but I wish it were not even necessary to write books on this. Bursch’s book goes beyond his acute legal understanding and addresses issues more broadly, including biological development.

If you’re a fan of the RSV translation of the Bible, or otherwise a book nerd, I recommend Bible: The Story of the King James Version by Gordon Campbell. I’ve always appreciated the King James Version (that’s the standard version that the RSV is revised from) and as a Catholic convert, I favor the RSV. Campbell’s Bible provides the history of the book, including noting with irony that the anti-Catholic KJV would evolve into a popular RSV-Catholic Edition Bible. I particularly enjoyed learning about the process used for the translation, which helps me to understand why I appreciate the rhythm and beauty of it so much. I’ll always prefer “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” over the NAB’s “when I walk through a dark valley.” Now I know why.

In general, I don’t read politicians’ books. I understood that JD Vance became a politician because he wrote a book as opposed to the typical vapid, ghost written, self-promoting book for a would-be national politician. A friend recommended Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, and I’m thankful he did. This is a thought-provoking, well written, and interesting book—not typical for a politician.

I re-read a number of short, good books from my youth to finish a local library challenge. Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place was interesting as a teen but amazing as an adult. Ten Boom hid Jews and ended up in a Nazi concentration camp. The bare facts are interesting, but the real story is about her (Dutch Calvinist) faith and her saintly sister, who experienced a gradual thinning of the veil between Heaven and Earth and embraced suffering and love in ways that defy explanation. The Protestant author lacks the proper vocabulary to even describe some of the transformation she witnessed, but I think Catholic readers will have a richer understanding. I first read this in public school; I doubt they do that anymore. I also re-read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I remembered the main plot: in the dystopian future, firemen burn books since homes are fireproof. I forgot the other social commentary (abortion, divorce, youth violence) that was actually more interesting to me now than when I first read it as a teenager. I also noticed that Bradbury seemed to completely fail to guess the massive inflation of the last seven decades.

J.C. Miller is a husband, father of six, and attorney who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Monica Migliorino Miller:

The Town that Started the Civil War, Nat Brandt, Syracuse University Press, 1990

This is a fast-paced historical narrative regarding how the residents of the small town of Oberlin, Ohio hid John Price, a runaway slave from Kentucky, in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850. This is a fascinating story of human beings following their consciences, consciences formed by Christian principles of love of neighbor and in obedience to a Higher Law—and of those who sacrificed themselves for the sake of justice. While this drama begins in the year 1858, the defiance of an unjust law, the arrests of the “rescuers”, their court trials and their jail terms have a contemporary parallel. Brandt notes this in the book’s preface: “This is a story about courage—about physical courage, and moral courage. About citizens of a small town … living and working side by side in unusual harmony. … Some experienced slavery firsthand, some could only imagine what it was like. Yet, when a relative newcomer, an escaped slave was trapped and spirited away, they left their shops, their homes, their classrooms without hesitation, without regard for consequences, to rescue a man whom most of them did not even know.”

This is a story with contemporary parallels. The clash between the law of the land and an individual’s conscience, between what a government decrees and what those in Oberlin believed to be ‘Higher Law,’ the law of God, which continues into our own time.”

As an example, Brandt refers to the Sanctuary movement in which “Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen and lay workers shield Central American victims of oppression from deportation.”

Well, perhaps an even more fitting parallel are the pro-lifers who are willing to defy laws that protect the abortion practice—those pro-life rescuers, some of whom are in federal prison right now for defending the unborn from being put to death in our nation’s abortion centers. Those who hid James Price are even called “rescuers.” It is indeed uncanny how the experience of those who participate in pro-life rescues so closely matches the rescuers of Oberlin. As the Oberlin rescuers were “unabashed” at their breaking unjust laws—so are pro-life rescuers who, like their Oberlin forebears “carry themselves as if they felt that their case was well made with conscience, and the Higher Law, however it might stand with human enactments and human tribunals.” As the 1858 rescuers did not expect a fair trial—neither do pro-lifers. As the 1858 rescuers defied court rules and openly called for justice, and even asked for a kind of “defense of others”—citing the injustices slaves must endure—pro-life defendants also follow the same course. And, as many of the Oberlin rescuers did not even know John Price, pro-life rescuers certainly do not know the unborn for whom they perform an act of defense. And as one Oberlin rescuer stated for the sake of their cause: “To do it, we must make sacrifices—go to prison.”

Ironically, this book was given to me by pro-lifer Heather Idoni, currently imprisoned for a 2020 rescue in which she participated at the Washington D.C. Surgi-Center where the unborn are killed even into the third trimester. The parallels of Oberlin are certainly not lost on her.

Brandt’s book is well-written, meticulously researched, loaded with detail, replete with many photos. A story about people taking a stand to do what is right.

Monica Migliorino Miller, Ph.D. is the director of Citizens for a pro-Life Society, has participated in several pro-life rescues dating back to 1978, is the author of Abandoned—The Untold Story of the Abortion Wars, St. Benedict Press/Tan books, 2012 and is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit.

Ines A. Murzaku:

Congratulations to Catholic World Report for two decades of publishing the always-much-anticipated “Best Book I Read” series—and for consistently guiding readers toward the best of Catholic publishing. It is an inspiring exercise, particularly as we light the candles of the Advent wreath and start the journey through this joyful season.

This year, alongside my ongoing research on the “revolutions” of St. Mother Teresa, I researched the rich and evolving world of Catholic education. I explored its challenges, celebrated its achievements, and pondered its future trajectory. Among the standout reads in this field were:

• Heft, J. L. (2021): The Future of Catholic Higher Education(Kindle ed.). Oxford University Press
• Gleason, P. (1995): Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford
• Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2019): The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin
• Morey, M., & Pederit, J. (2010): Catholic Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis. Oxford

For those with a soft spot for immigration memoirs—particularly nonfiction hailing from the former Yugoslavia—Dreaming from the Trunk of an American Car (Manhattan Book Group 2024) by Dr. Pashko R. Camaj is a treasure. Dr. Camaj’s deeply personal narrative spans his childhood to his present-day life, intricately woven with stories passed down by his late parents and encounters with fascinating individuals along the way. It’s heartfelt, poignant, and engaging.

Now, for an early treat from the publishing pipeline! Coming in 2025, the Catholic University of America will unveil a new series sure to delight every Greek, Byzantine, and Eastern Catholic enthusiast—Eastern Catholic Studies and Texts. The inaugural volume, Eastern Catholic Theology in Action: Essays in Liturgy, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism, edited by Andrew J. Summerson and Cyril Kennedy, is a masterpiece in the making. I had the privilege of being one of the presenters of this work at the AAR/SBL annual meeting in San Diego in November, an event crowned by vespers celebrated by the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle.

Dedicated to the Very Rev. Dr. Peter Galadza—celebrated as “a catalyst for the cause of Eastern Catholic Theology: Priest, Father, Mentor, Friend”—this series promises to be a game-changer. It provides a long-overdue platform for Eastern Catholic theologians in the US to share their perspectives, shining a spotlight on the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches and amplifying voices often overlooked in academic and ecclesiastical circles. If this first volume is any indication, we are on the verge of an extraordinary era for Eastern Catholic scholarship.

In sum, what a year for rich literary discoveries and exciting glimpses into what lies ahead! Keep your bookshelves ready, your hearts open, and your Advent candles lit!

Ines A. Murzaku is professor of Church history and director of the Catholic Studies Program at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Eleanor Nicholson:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I’d valued this book, without considering it one of my favorite Dickens novels. I also have long held concerns about the teachability of this book in a course geared to high school students. As I prepared to teach it this past year, however, I found it even more moving and profound than I had remembered. The contrast between cruel historical Fate and the incarnational operation of Grace struck me in a new way. I (and my high school students, who went away professed Lovers of Boz) wept together over many passages.

To Crown With Liberty by Karen Ullo.I had the honor of reading this in manuscript form. Ullo, whom I consider one of the greatest of our living Catholic novelists (and one of our most insightful editors too), has achieved something remarkable here in her integration of personal narrative with a gripping historical setting. In addition to providing me with a thrilling read, this novel helped me in my preparation for teaching A Tale of Two Cities.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I re-read this book for about the hundredth time in the process of editing it for an upcoming Ignatius Critical Edition. I have a deep affection for it as the second Dickens novel I read in my life and the first one I loved (pace Great Expectations, which infuriated my eleven-year-old soul). Young David may not be sure that he is the hero of his own story, but he has spoken to me heroically at every stage of my life.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.Introducing my favorite novels to our children is one of the golden experiences of homeschooling. This year, after reading Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility with our eldest two, we read Northanger together. This represented a special opportunity to repair a difficult reading experience of my youth: Because I had little knowledge of the Gothic tradition when I first read this novel, I felt as if I were in the company of people much cleverer than I, making hilarious jokes that I could not appreciate because I lacked sufficient knowledge. Thus, I felt honor-bound to subject my daughters to many lengthy lectures on early Gothic novels, in addition to the lectures on Aristotelian moral theology, which inevitably arise when reading Austen. (The girls did enjoy the novel in spite of me, and now know how properly to judge John Thorpe’s “review” of Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk.)

Between teaching, homeschooling, and months of all-day “morning sickness”, I once again sought consolation in murder mysteries. This year, two series deserve special mention:

The Charlie Chan novels by Earl Derr Biggers (strongly recommended by novelist T. M. Doran). I was startled to realize that, despite careful study of the Sidney Toler adaptations thirty-plus years ago, I had not actually read the novels. As I worked to remedy this sin of omission, I was delighted to find how entertaining and well-written they are. The cultural nuances are truly splendid.

The Albert Campion novels by Margery Allingham. I attempted a stroll through Ellery Queen but found my brain was too fizzled to follow the clues. One of the Queens of Mystery Fiction, Allingham is very much in the “marvel at the beauty of the prose, but don’t worry too much about solving the mystery” tradition—just what the doctor ordered for 2024.

Eleanor Bourg Nicholson is a novelist, scholar, literature instructor for Homeschool Connections, and a homeschooling mother of many.

Carl E. Olson:

As always, I will forego mentioning any Ignatius Press books, while noting that there were many, and all were excellent.

Two of my favorite books of the past year featured winning and impressive combinations of theological insight, patristics, and spiritual depth. Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses, by Norwegian bishop and Trappist monk Erik Varden, is (to borrow from my review), “Rich with wisdom and deeply challenging … a book for everyone, a relatively short but robust reflection on essential truths, rendered with serenity and hope.” The Nicene Creed, by Jared Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating, is an excellent book that (again, borrowing from my review) “shed[s] light on the great symbol of faith … in a way that is both intellectually rewarding and spiritually edifying.”

T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy by James Matthew Wilson is a short but powerful monograph filled with many keen insights. And Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, Wilson’s fourth collection of poetry, demonstrates anew why he is rightly praised as the leading poet of his generation. Speaking of poetry, don’t miss Dana Gioia’s new collection, Poetry As Enchantment and Other Essays, which covers much ground with clarity, charm, and warmth.

The Queering of the American Child: How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids by Logan Lancing is not easy reading, but it is necessary reading for anyone seeking unvarnished and relentlessly documented facts about queer has been conquering public education for some thirty years. While that book comes at the current chaos from a secular perspective, R.J. Snell’s Lost in the Chaos: Immanence, Despair, Hope is a razor-sharp tour de force that draws deeply on Chesterton, Benedict XVI, Charles Taylor, and others in addressing the metaphysical, spiritual, and cultural crises of the current age. Meanwhile, Tracey Rowland’s Unconformed to the Age: Essays in Catholic Ecclesiology is a beautifully written, Ratzinger-ian contemplation of ecclesiology that does not shy away from pointed observations about numerous problems within the Church today.

On an artistic note, the 1998 volume Wondrous Strange: The Wyeth Tradition traces the (very real and sometimes strange) visual lineage of Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth, with many wonderful, full-colored reproductions. The 1969 study The Brandywine Tradition, by Henry C. Pitz, offers much more history, context, and detail while expanding the circles of artists connected to the eastern Pennsylvania region.

Finally, three books that I have not yet finished but deserve to be mentioned. First, Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s Commentary on the Book of Isaiah, which balances scholarly mastery with inviting accessibility. I am using it in teaching a Bible study in my parish, and it can only be topped by classes with Fr. Pacwa himself—which I had the pleasure of enjoying during my MTS studies with him in the late 1990s. Secondly, Brante Pitre’s Jesus and the Divine Christology is another notable achievement from an exceptional New Testament scholar, the graduate level version of sorts of his popular The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ. Thirdly, The Oxford Handbook of Deification, edited by Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Matthew Levering, is a staggering and exciting achievement: a 740-page volume featuring 44 essays by an impressive array of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant scholars.

Jared Ortiz:

It took me seven months, but I finished John Fosse’s Septology. A mystical series of novels about the “shining darkness” of God who is both near and far, outside and inside everything, above us and closer to us than we are to ourselves. Not a page turner and, in fact, all 667 pages are one long uninterrupted sentence (well, perhaps they break at the end of each novel when the character seems to fall asleep), but it is beautiful and when I finished it late one night, I couldn’t sleep for several hours. Also, the book is a rather striking meditation on time and the meaning of our ‘younger selves’ and how they live on and within and alongside us. Anyway, for the right reader, this book by a Catholic convert and Nobel Prize winner is a must.

Like her other novels, Eleanor Bourg Nicholson’s Wake of Malice was just a delight to read and taught me about little-known bits of Catholic history, like the Pope in the 19th century giving the Dominicans authority to deal with vampires, the Franciscans with werewolves, and the Jesuits with leprechauns, especially zombie leprechauns (though the Jesuits have generally fallen down on the job). Within a rolicking good story, we also get many fine Thomistic discourses on the monsters of horror and a very sweet romance plot!

Perhaps the most moving book of the year was Harrison Scott Key’s How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. After fifteen years of marriage, Key discovers his wife is having an affair with their neighbor. Instead of killing him and divorcing her, Key decides to fight for his wife. He learns to die to himself and pursue her even while forgiving her ongoing infidelity until God reconciles them in the most remarkable manner. The book is gut-wrenching as well as laugh-out-loud funny. I sobbed more than once. It is a truly remarkable story of God’s grace in the key of Flannery O’Connor. It made me want and try to be a better husband.

My spiritual reading has been very beautiful this year and included two books by Bishop Erik Varden (who has my vote for next pope), The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance and Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses, both of which are profound and compelling meditations on the Christian life. Both weave together reflection on Scripture, literature, music, culture, language, and tradition in a learned and beautiful way. Bishop Varden makes Christianity credible. I am currently reading Louis Bouyer’s The Meaning of Monastic Life, a book which has led me deeper inside the inner logic of the Christian life in really surprising ways.

Dr. Jared Ortiz is Professor of Religion at Hope College and author of You Made Us for Yourself: Creation in St Augustine’s Confessions (Fortress Press, 2016).

Rhonda Ortiz:

I began the year in the late Georgian era with Belinda by Maria Edgeworth. This lesser-known classic earns a mention in Jane Austen’s famous defense of the novel: “‘Oh! it is only a novel!’… ‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;’ or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.” Very true. While I found the title character too proper for likeability—Belinda’s rationalistic morality would have been more interesting had she been an actual saint—the cast was colorful, and the plot was not at all what I expected.

After Belinda, rereading the Austen corpus seemed fitting. I managed three this year: Persuasion (Austen’s love letter to the Royal Navy; pairs well with Patrick O’Brian), Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy is tolerable, I suppose, but still not handsome enough to tempt me), and Sense and Sensibility (you needed a developmental editor for this one, Jane). And Julia Yost’s Jane Austen’s Darkness made for good supplemental reading.

Not yet tired of the Regency period, I read Patrick O’Brian’s Desolation Island (“My God, oh my God … six hundred men”) and Elizabeth Grant’s finely drawn romantic psychological drama, An Independent Heart. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Karen Ullo’s To Crown with Liberty, set between revolutionary France and Spanish Louisiana (CWR review here). From there, I jumped to 1897 Philadelphia with Erica Colahan’s moving debut, The Oystercatcher of Southwark, then onward to Russia with Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow (how can a purgatorial tale be so charming?) and Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus (a modern classic, and very Russian—epic, paradoxical, deeply religious, and, yes, the protagonist dies in the end). Another highlight worth mentioning: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle made for a great book club conversation.

2024 was also ripe for fictional murder, beginning with the Father Gabriel series by Fiorella de Maria. (I interviewed Fiorella in June behalf of CWR.) Then murder took a preternatural and Irish turn with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson’s Wake of Malice. As summer wore on and my husband and I grew desperate for school to begin, we took refuge in Agatha Christie: The A.B.C. Murders, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Appointment with Death, Crooked House, Remembered Death, and Murder in Retrospect. The last time I binge read Christie, I was nine months pregnant. At that precarious juncture, I craved novels that were analytical (because I was emotional) and made no demands (because I was heavy laden). That my imagination turns to murder in times of stressful anticipation is disconcerting but consistent.

On to nonfiction: I read Fr. Paul Murray, OP’s insightful Preachers at Prayer with my lay Dominican fraternity. Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender was both helpful and engaging. Cassandra Nelson’s A Theology of Fiction is worth consideration. And fellow history buffs will appreciate Mark Peterson’s The City-State of Boston.

Finally: Meet Me at the Lighthouse, a collection of poems by Dana Gioia, former poet laureate of California. I had the pleasure of hearing Dana speak at the recent Catholic Imagination Conference, and when he read “Psalm for Our Lady Queen of the Angels,” about Los Angeles’s lost identity, I wept. Now, I’m a native Oregonian who grew up at a time when the word Californian couldn’t be uttered without spewing venom. That I felt nostalgic for old Los Angeles, of all places—it says something about the poem and the poet. Add Meet Me at the Lighthouse to your library. You won’t regret it.

Rhonda Ortiz is a novelist, a founding editor of Chrism Press, and editor-in-chief of Dappled Things. Find her online at rhondaortiz.com.

William L. Patenaude:

Much of 2024 was sufficiently unsettling that my reading fell generally into two groups: books that helped me better understand history and books that helped me frame or escape from current events.

In the former, two titles made the greatest impression. One was Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity by Brooks D. Simpson (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000). Simpson succeeds where many biographers don’t. He allows the truth to speak for itself without the subject’s aggrandizement or demonization.

In the Church history department, I enjoyed The Lord as Their Portion: The Story of the Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World by Elizabeth Rapley (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011). Here again, Rapley offers facts without signaling any particular narrative, other than the bare truth of what we owe generations of religious men and women.

Two fictional works also make my 2024 list because they achieve a goal dear to my heart: presenting the Gospel through the art of storytelling.

Having watched and enjoyed Amazon Prime Video’s series The Rings of Power, I wanted to go back and reread J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which serves as Tolkien’s Book of Genesis as well as a primer on the early history of Middle Earth. I first read this text as a young man who had divorced himself from the Church. Reading it again this summer, having returned to the faith many years ago now, I was delighted to find what everyone else seemed to know: that the Catholic flame burns brightly in this fictional work. Amazing stuff, especially the book’s creation account.

A more recent work by journalist Michael Gryboski, The Enigma of Father Vera Daniel (Ambassador International, 2022) was really quite enjoyable. Set within a fictional version of revolutionary France, Gryboski’s tale presents the priesthood—and the Catholic faith in general—as, you guessed it, an enigma to those who insist on this or that political placement of Catholicism.

Last, I can never stray too far from my hero, Pope Benedict XVI. One book in particular is a go-to for me when the world has my head spinning. Written decades before his pontificate, Faith and the Future (Ignatius Press, 1971) is a tremendously comforting, challenging, and prescient work.

I’ll end with some of Ratzinger’s final words in this highly recommended little work: “But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world.” (pg. 117).

William L. Patenaude MA, KHS has a master’s degree in theology, is a mechanical engineer, and is the author of the novel A Printer’s Choice.

Joseph Pearce:

I read books vocationally and recreationally. The former I read while following my vocation as a writer, teacher and editor; the latter are books that I read for the pure pleasure of the exercise. Since, however, there is also much pleasure to be gained in vocational reading, I’m going to include and begin with those books that I’ve read or reread vocationally.

I’ve co-taught two courses this year at Ave Maria University with Father Fessio. For the course on Chesterton, we read Orthodoxy and The Man Who was Thursday, and for our course on Lewis and Tolkien we read Miracles by the former and Tree and Leaf by the latter. It’s always good to have a reason or an excuse to return to these classic works by three of my favourite writers.

I’m currently teaching three online courses, each of which offers the opportunity to return to classic literature. In a course on “Poems Every Catholic Should Know” for Homeschool Connections, we’re reading the anthology of Christian verse of that title, which I had the honour of compiling. In the online course for the newly-founded Rosary College on “Classical Epic and Tragedy”, we’re reading The Iliad, The Odyssey, Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays and The Aeneid. Finally, for the graduate course on Shakespeare for Memoria College, we’ve read no fewer than twelve of the Bard’s plays, including all seven of the plays published in the Ignatius Critical Editions: Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

The weekly FORMED Book Club that I record with Father Fessio and Vivian Dudro of Ignatius Press offers the opportunity to read and discuss some truly wonderful books. The best of all the books we’ve read this year, me judice, is The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri de Lubac.

In the “Poem of the Week” podcast which I record for the Inner Sanctum of my personal website, I’m reading selections from The Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, the two volumes of which cover the four centuries from Edmund Spenser to Seamus Heaney.

This brings us to this year’s recreational reading which has largely been devoted to the reading of contemporary Catholic fiction. I’ve read far more than I can mention but the highlights include Dying for Revenge by Barbara Golder, If You Can Get It by Brendan Hodge, Wake of Malice by Eleanor Bourg Nicolson, We’ll Never Tell Them by Fiorella de Maria and The Beast of Bethulia Park by S. P. Caldwell. I’ve also discovered some little-known Catholic fiction from the mid-twentieth century, recently resurrected and republished: The Mass of Brother Michel by Michael Kent and The Stranger by Malachy Carroll.

Lighter reading by better known writers has included Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh and Forsake the Sky by Tim Powers. Heavier fare of note included Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer by Annie-Paule de Prinsac and Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathens Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress by Jessica Hooten Wilson.

Finally, succumbing to a serious bout of bibliophilia, I must mention Rasselas by Samuel Johnson, which I’m presently reading in an edition published in 1819. It’s like reading in the company of the ghosts who had previously turned its pages. Printed in the year in which Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” were first published, to say nothing of new volumes of verse by Byron, Shelley and Keats, this antique tome is as much a joy to handle as it is to read.

Joseph Pearce is the author of numerous literary studies, including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare, and Shakespeare on Love, as well as biographies on Oscar Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is the general editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series.

Andrew Petiprin:

One of the highlights of 2024 for me has been getting to know the novelist and critic Joshua Hren, who spoke to me on camera in October about his new book Blue Walls Falling Down. Our strange times need more and better novels to help us discern reality, and to that end, what Hren calls “contemplative realism” is on full display in this book, his second novel. It is a rich story about childbirth, race relations, and the forgotten people and places of America, where Hren helps us find solid metaphysical ground from which to espy our perilous surroundings. The book’s protagonist, Stella Tesknota, is in the same place where a lot of us find ourselves after pandemics and politics – that is, in a terrible state of longing. Blue Walls Falling Down delivers moments of consolation along with several major shocks, as the best novels do.

A great novel I read too casually as a teenager and have re-read with rapt attention in 2024 is Billiards at Half-Past Nine by the 1972 Nobel Prize-winner, Heinrich Böll. Looking through the eyes of several narrators, we see the devastation of one twentieth-century German family, represented by three generations of architects. One man built something great, the next man destroyed it, and the last is paralyzed by the past. Amid the ruins, does one attempt to rebuild the old or start completely from scratch?

Instead of the sprawling, cinematic epic it could have been, Billiards is set during one day in the city of Köln in 1958, when the acrid smell of Nazism had not come close to dissipating. In what may be his best of many great works, Böll draws us deep into the absurdity of life amid the banality of evil, conveying a warranted cynicism about authority and the future of the West. And although Böll was a man of the Left, this book imparts the traditional view that the dead are alive in us; but also, they are dead in us. In this world, an arbitrary daily routine may be one’s best hope of carrying on.

As host of the Ignatius Press podcast, it continues to be a privilege to read a wide array of excellent new non-fiction books, written by interesting people I get to interview in depth. Among my favorites this year are two works by women. Abigail Favale’s spiritual memoir Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion is a riveting read. As a former Protestant like Favale, I related to her journey from Evangelical purity culture to secular intellectualism to a reluctant surrender to the fullness of faith in the Catholic Church. She writes, “this is not a sudden exclamation, as from brushing against a hot stove. This is the drawn-out utterance of someone facing an awful, hitherto hidden truth.”

I was also deeply grateful for my first encounter with Ida Friederike Görres, whose illuminating twentieth-century study of John Henry Newman called A Life Sacrificed has recently appeared in an English translation by Jennifer S. Bryson. In an episode of the podcast, Bryson told me to expect much more from the largely unknown (to me) German-speaking Newman appreciators, including more translations of Görres’ work.

Finally, I have enjoyed a close read of a book I have until now merely dipped into. Marek Haltof’s Polish Cinema: A History, updated in a new edition in 2019, is an excellent overview of the artists and output from one of the world’s most important film nations.

Andrew Petiprin is a columnist at Catholic World Report and host of the Ignatius Press Podcast, as well as Founder and Editor at the Spe Salvi Institute.

S.Kirk Pierzchala:

I read many wonderful books this year, but these titles resonated with me in rather deep ways:

A Prayer Journal, by Flannery O’Connor. Short and often painful in its glimpses into a soul struggling to explore her talents while maintaining humility and developing her craft. This one lives on my bedside table.

The Jerusalem Passage, by Andrew Gillsmith. In a post-apocalyptic Holy Land, an aged priest undertakes a pilgrimage to atone for his past sins. A stark yet beautifully crafted work inspired by the lines of the prophet Ezekiel, where God promises to remove the sinner’s stony heart and replace it with one of natural flesh.

The Book of New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe. Part “Hero’s Journey”, part “Chosen One” trope, this remarkable quintet set over a million years in the future subverts many common adventure expectations as it delivers an experience unlike any other. At times terrifying, humorous and dazzling, at others frustrating and mystifying, the tale often digresses into deep philosophical and theological observations that can take the reader’s breath away, or even produce tears at the beauty of the language and insight.

S .Kirk Pierzchala is a lay Dominican and novelist living in the Pacific Northwest.

Matthew Ramage:

I aim to balance my reading with a mix of classics, new texts, books related to my research, and works that challenge me to step out of my comfort zone. In that spirit, this year I especially enjoyed revisiting C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet with seniors in my seminar “Reading God’s Two Books with the Inklings.” By taking readers outside our world, this imaginative sci-fi work offers profound insights into the created world that are hard to express in more didactic ways.

My standout read from a non-Catholic believer was Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming by Peter Enns. It’s a thought-provoking exploration of the complexities of navigating biblical faith in the modern world.

On the more unconventional side, I got into Unidentified Flying Hyperobject by James Madden. This is a significant read for those intrigued by the UFO/UAP phenomenon but dissatisfied with conventional takes. Madden’s interdisciplinary approach crosses traditional academic boundaries, blending classical and modern philosophy, mythology, and cognitive science. In a similar way that I’ve come to approach miracles across religious traditions, Madden’s work encouraged me to cultivate greater awe in the presence of our mysterious universe, to take people’s purported UFO experiences more seriously, and to open myself to the possibility that something real might lie behind them—even if it doesn’t involve the little green men commonly associated with such phenomena.

Further still outside my comfort zone, I finally gave Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents the attention it deserves nearly two decades after first skimming it in grad school. This book may challenge those with insecure faith, but wrestling with Freud’s ideas about belief and the interplay of human rationality and primal instincts can become an opportunity to refine one’s faith. This read reminds us that our rational nature remains rooted in a primal infrastructure that did not vanish when we became human. I believe that this recognition is crucial for understanding how sin operates in creatures who are more—but not thereby other—than animals.

As a Ratzinger scholar, I can’t help but point to some titles in this realm. Richard DeClue’s recent monograph The Mind of Benedict XVI stands out as an eminently comprehensive and accessible overview of this beloved pope’s theology, offering readers a renewed appreciation of Benedict’s unparalleled brilliance and enduring relevance.

Ratzinger on Religious Pluralism by Fr. Sameer Advani is hands-down the most impressive study of Benedict XVI’s theology of religions to date. Advani synthesizes Ratzinger’s early, lesser-known writings with key later texts to showcase the pontiff’s balanced middle ground between exclusivism and pluralism while offering a concrete alternative that better reflects the uniquely biblical shape of authentically Catholic theology. Readers will be refreshed by how vigorously Benedict defended both Christian mission and interreligious dialogue, considering both to be mutually transformative processes. This result is a must-read for Ratzinger enthusiasts and indeed for anyone interested in understanding the place of other religions in God’s plan.

In cammino alla ricerca della verità by Piergiorgio Odifreddi is a remarkable book showcasing what authentic dialogue with non-Christians ought to look like. Its subject is a series of frank conversations between Pope Benedict XVI and atheist mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi. Between 2013 and 2021, the two met face-to-face four times and exchanged numerous letters on a wide range of issues. This pontiff considered fraternal dialogue with non-Christians essential, not only for propagating the gospel but also for “the perpetual self-purification of Christianity.” Although this book is in Italian, I’ve summarized many of its highlights in two entries of my “God’s Two Books” column here at CWR.

Matthew Ramage is a professor of theology and co-director of the Center for Integral Ecology at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Tracey Rowland:

My Top 10 Books for 2024

1. John O’Sullivan, Sleepwalking into Wokeness: How We Got There (Academia Press: Washington-London, 2024). This is a very engaging account of the politics of the last half century with a foreword by Rod Dreher. Dreher describes the book as a cultural history tour led by a witty and learned companion. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are the heroes of the journey.
2. Gil Bailie, The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self: Recovering the Christian of Personhood (Angelico Press, 2023). This is one of those books that can only be read slowly because almost every paragraph contains some original thought for reflection. For example, Bailie suggests that there are two prominent forms of nihilism: the epistemological one exhibited by Pilate when he shruggingly asked Jesus, “What is Truth”? and the socially contagious one exhibited by the mob when it shouted in unison, “crucify him”.
3. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, Priests of History (Zondervan Reflective: 2024). This is a book by an Australian Anglican scholar; it’s a plea for the importance of historical literacy. It will appeal to those who love history and want to defend its relevance.
4. Joseph Carola, Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth-Century Catholicism (Emmaus Academic, 2023) offers readers the 19th century “back-story” to twentieth century Catholic theology.
5. Pidel, Aaron, Levering, Matthew and Anderson, Justin, M (eds), The Roman School (Brill, 2024) covers the same period as Carola’s book but contains chapters from different authors. The book is worth buying for chapter 10 alone – Nicolas Steeves’ ‘Vice and Grace: Did Kleutgen Mar Dogma?’
6. Anderson, Justin M, Levering, Matthew, and Pidel, Aaron (eds), Ignatius of Loyola and Thomas Aquinas: A Jesuit Ressourcement (Catholic University of America, 2024). Another Jesuit Ressourcement publication – particularly valuable for its section on ways of experiencing the divine in Aquinas and Loyola.
7. D.C. Schindler, God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics (St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, 2023). This is an important work for those interested in post-liberal political theory.
8. Robert Cardinal Sarah, He Gave Us So Much: A Tribute to Benedict XVI (Ignatius: San Francisco, 2023). For those who miss Benedict, Sarah is a great source of consolation.
9. Balázs M. Mezei, Radical Revelation (London: T& T Clark, 2017). This is a very dense academic book, so not for general reading, but it is an excellent work for those interested in the theology of revelation.
10. Darabos, Adam and Jancsó, András, Theologians on Modern Politics (Budapest: The Danube Institute, 2023). This is written at a popular level and is divided into three sections: European Catholicism, Western Protestantism and Hungarian Catholicism. It is thus interesting in that it contains material on scholars generally unknown in the Anglophone world.

Tracey Rowland holds the St. John Paul II Chair of Theology at the University of Notre Dame (Australia).

Sean Salai:

In a year that witnessed a widespread political backlash against the elites, the best book I read came from a Catholic sociologist pushing back against the creeping transformation of marriage into something reserved only for the wealthy and powerful.

University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox outlines in Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (HarperCollins, 2024) how the wealthy elites recognize that tying the knot protects people from loneliness with human connection, gives them the meaning of living for someone else, and provides more financial stability than staying single. Yet many celebrities and millionaires publicly promote the single life for poorer adults, while quietly living conventional lives as spouses and parents themselves.

Wilcox’s book presents research showing that religious believers, conservatives, Asian Americans, and the upwardly mobile have the strongest marriages. He also points to research showing that children of two-parent families end up better adjusted and more likely to contribute to society. In short, families are the backbone of society.

To be fair, much of this material is not new and in fact has been covered many times by Catholic researchers. It also does not negate the fact that some people won’t, can’t, and/or shouldn’t have children — after all, the Catholic Church offers vowed religious life and consecrated virginity as noble vocations for those called to them. Nor should anyone get married and have children based on an impersonal analysis of sociological data, as opposed to careful discernment and prayer.

What Wilcox adds to the mix here is a provocative suggestion that American elites somehow benefit from persuading large swaths of people they are too poor to afford the simple pleasures of home ownership, family, and commitment. The fear of not being able to afford marriage and children is valid, but that’s very different from telling the working class (hypocritically) through popular culture to give up on reproducing. Wilcox does the best job I’ve seen in years of presenting such debates in a way that forces the reader to self-reflect and wrestle with them. It all seems highly relevant to the current national reckoning over inflation and the recent election results that resist the idea that more working and middle class Americans should embrace the label of “childless cat ladies” — or, as Wilcox might suggest, to embrace their lower-class fates as non-religious, single renters who rely on public transportation and the government for moral guidance.

Dr. Sean Salai, D.Min is the culture reporter at The Washington Times, a former Jesuit, and a pastoral theologian. He is the author or editor of several books on Pope Francis and Ignatian spirituality.

Kathy Schiffer:

So many books, so little time! My sincere apologies to the other great writers whose books have cluttered my bedside table and whose ideas have stuck in my mind. Here are just a few of my favorites from the last year:

Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders by Joshua Charles. I first discovered Joshua Charles through his wisdom as expressed in short commentaries on Facebook. I’ve come to love his published writings, as well! My favorite chapter in this book is on Religion, Virtue and Morality; in it, he shows how religion is essential to the preservation of virtue, and thus liberty itself, for it made man accountable to God.

Christ, Science, and Wisdom: What We Can Know About Jesus, Mary, and Miracles by Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. There are those in the secular scientific community who believe that science and faith are opposites which cannot peacefully coexist. Father Spitzer is the proof that those guys are wrong! His book offers scientific proof for the existence of God – drawn from the Shroud of Turin and recent scientifically-investigated Eucharistic miracles. He shows how Marian interventions such as the Tilma of Guadalupe, the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, and many physical and spiritual healings at Lourdes, together point to the truth of the spiritual world.

Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church by Brandon Vogt. Fifty percent of young people who were raised in the Church, Vogt reports, are no longer Catholic today. And for every person who enters the Catholic Church, an average of 6.5 people leave. Brandon offers a plan for encouraging our grown children (and others) to reconsider, learn, and come back to Christ’s Church.

There and Back Again: A Somewhat Religious Odyssey by Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Father Longenecker is a prolific author with more than 20 books and booklets on his resume. I keep a couple copies of his More Christianity on my bookshelf, ready to be passed along to interested Protestant friends who might wonder what makes our faith stand out. This latest book is his personal conversion story, told with wit and self-deprecating humor. Marcus Grodi called it “one of the most comedic conversion stories.” Joseph Pearce agreed: “It is full of the good humor,” Pearce said, “that is the fruit of true humility … ”

The Best Argument for God by Patrick Flynn. Well, who wouldn’t want to have the best answer to that question! Logically and methodologically, listing Objections and Responses, Flynn defends classical theism against the straw man fallacies of atheistic naturalism. Best of all, he slings no arrows – never criticizing, but preferring to attract nonbelievers with the honey of truth.

Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity: The Search for a Meaningful Life by Christopher Kaczor and Matthew R. Petrusek. Author and psychologist Jordan Peterson has said that the Bible is “the first book,” a book he regards highly and takes into account as he makes life decisions. He has called Catholicism “profoundly sane.” While we sit on the sidelines and watch as Peterson approaches the decision that could change his life – that is, the decision to become Catholic – this book, published by the Word On Fire Institute and co-authored by Kaczor and Petrusek, can help us to fill our time.

Kathy Schiffer has written for the National Catholic Register, Aleteia, Zenit, the Michigan Catholic, Legatus Magazine, and other Catholic publications.

Kevin Schmiesing:

New Books

If you’re like me, you know less about the history of our neighbors to the south than you should. To remedy that, check out David Gilbert’s The End of Catholic Mexico: Causes and Consequences of the Mexican Reforma (1855–1861). A book of serious scholarship, but accessibly written and certainly of interest to any thoughtful Catholic.

Another scholarly yet accessible piece of history is John F. Quinn’s The Rise of Newport’s Catholics: From Colonial Outcasts to Gilded Age Leaders. With skillful storytelling and a cast of colorful characters, Quinn recounts the story of Catholicism in Rhode Island.

Mike Aquilina has established himself as the foremost contemporary author of popular histories of the early Church. Treat yourself to his latest romp through Christianity’s early days in Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized.

For insightful, honest commentary on poverty, race, welfare, and more, from one of the most innovative thinkers and practitioners in the field today, see Ismael Hernandez’s Rethinking Charity: Restoring Dignity to Poverty Relief.

Older Books, Newly Discovered

Jean-Pierre Charbonnier, Christians in China: A.D. 600 to 2000. An exceptionally thorough and fascinating account of the history of the faith in the Middle Kingdom.

Robert Royal, The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West. A whirlwind tour of the history of Western thought, and a marvelous model of fides et ratio.

Thomas Tweed, America’s Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital. A well-researched account of the construction and significance of the monumental Basilica and National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Classic Fiction, Newly Discovered

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; Charlotte Brönte, Shirley; Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons and Smoke; St. John Henry Newman, Callista: A Sketch of the Third Century

Kevin Schmiesing is director of research at the Freedom & Virtue Institute, co-host of the Catholic History Trek podcast, and the author of many books and articles in the field of Church history.

Fr. George E. Schultze, SJ:

I read the Al-Muntada Al-Islami English translation of the Qur’an, a text of verses. Not knowing Arabic, I could not capture the text’s poetic nature or literary fame. Some of the text parallels a Judeo-Christian understanding of the moral life, often referring to Biblical accounts. An earnest reader would need commentary support to appreciate it. There are obvious rejections of Christian anthropology and theology, most evidently the denial of Jesus Christ as God and the rejection of the Holy Trinity. One might read as an accompanying text William Kilpatrick’s Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West.

I recommend Luis Pojman’s Philosophy of Religion as an excellent overview of philosophers’ views on God’s existence or non-existence. Pojman briefly explains earlier proofs of St. Anselm of Canterbury and St. Thomas Aquinas, Kant’s criticisms, and Alvin Plantinga’s modal response of possibility, possible worlds, and necessity—with criticism. The book includes, among other topics, philosophical discussions of miracles, evil, and ethics. It is short and accessible.

Michael Murray and Michael Rea’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion is a primary text for the philosophy students at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Beit Jala, Palestine. The Jordanian students, in particular, are taught English as a second language starting in grade school. The authors provide clearly outlined proofs with follow-through explanations.

Karen Hall wrote The Sound of Silence: The Life and Canceling of a Heroic Jesuit Priest. I did not know Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ, personally, but like others, I knew of his ministry and presence in the Society of Jesus. Hall, a successful scriptwriter and author, describes a priest, academic, and friend who faithfully practiced what he taught. The Bishop’s words at diaconate ordinations ring out: “Receive the Gospel of Christ whose heart you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” Given the challenges within the Jesuits, this framed Fr. Paul’s way of proceeding.

Father George E. Schultze, SJ is a spiritual director at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem and the Latin Patriarchal Seminary in Beit Jala.

Paul Seaton:

Ah, reading! The nourishment of mind and soul, a deepening of the world and a respite from its travails. 2024’s reading provided a varied diet. Sometimes we want to understand what’s going on before us, sometimes we want to see things in the light of deeper truths, sometimes we want to enter into contact with Eternity. This year’s reading fed all three needs.

To understand Oct 7th, and especially the shocking gleeful response to it on the part of progressive academics, activists, and students, I read Adam Kirsch’s compact book On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice. Kirsch did for its underlying ideology, “settler colonialism,” what John Fonte did for “transnational progressivism,” what Phil Magness and Peter Wood did for The 1619 Project, and what James Lindsay, Josh Mitchell, and Chris Rufo did for Critical Race Theory and DEI. Progressivism is one of the banes of our intellectual and civic existence, always growing new monstrous heads. Kirsch provides the necessary Ideologiekritik of its newest monster in his fine study. He does the detective work of retracing its genealogy and articulating its worldview, provides the necessary historical and moral critique, and then sketches an alternative way of looking at history’s colonial tragedies that is at once more truthful and hopeful than the Manichean binaries of settler colonialism’s advocates. This is a book to read, then share with concerned fellow citizens and impressionable young people.

One thing that ideology always does is distort the precious human faculty of conscience. Given our age of soft (and not-so-soft) totalitarianisms, we need to constantly shore up this capacity to discern moral truth and hear the divine voice. Sacramental confession is the divinely established way, but reading authorized guides to conscience is another. Benedict XVI was one such. His little volume On Conscience is a fine antidote to the contemporary assaults on conscience. Composed of two lectures, one given just before the end of the Soviet Union and one just after, the lectures take place in the shadow of Communist ideology and its demoralization of entire populations, while also providing a penetrating assessment of liberal societies’ misguided subjectivistic understanding of conscience. In these two (Communist ideology and 1980’s liberal subjectivism), one encounters forerunners of today’s hard and soft assaults on conscience. Ratzinger then turns to the phenomenon itself and lays out conscience’s essential nature. It is a capacity, a developed ability, to perceive moral truth and to hear a transcendent Voice that commands and indicts, but also invites and forgives. In the final analysis, it is Christ, the incarnate Logos, who provides the full meaning of conscience.

Thanks to my bibliophile friend, Dan Mahoney, I finally got around to reading a book I’d heard about for several years, Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. What a feast! Here is biblical scholarship of the highest order, making a faith-sharpening case for the proximity of the written Gospels to the Figure they recount. He does so through the categories of “eyewitness” and “testimony,” essential categories of ancient historiography also attested to by early Christian authors in connection with the Gospels. This allows him not only to escape from dubious presuppositions of earlier biblical criticism, but to situate the investigation in its fullest context.

“Testimony offers us, I wish to suggest, both a reputable historiographic category for reading the Gospels as history, and also a theological model for understanding the Gospels as the entirely appropriate means of access to the historical reality of Jesus.”

“Theologically speaking, the category of testimony enables us to read the Gospels as precisely the kind of text we need in order to recognize the disclosure of God in the history of Jesus.” “[E]ntirely appropriate means”; “precisely the kind of text we need”: In this impressive work of New Testament scholarship, Bauckham begins and ends his study by crediting God with utmost fittingness in producing the Testaments to his mercy and presence by employing human persons and human means. If theology means giving reasons for God’s doings, this is an exquisite work of theology.

Paul Seaton teaches philosophy at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, MD. He works mainly in political philosophy and has translated a number of works by French philosophers.

Russell Shaw:

My best books of the year are the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Apologia pro Vita Sua of St. John Henry Newman, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Augustine’s book is often said to be the first autobiography. Whether that is strictly true or not I couldn’t say, but I have no difficulty believing that it is the first autobiography to be part of the Western canon. And it certainly presents a living portrait of the author.

Newman’s autobiography leaves out a lot (which, to be fair, Newman doesn’t promise) but it presents an interesting picture of the Oxford Movement in 19th century Anglicanism as well as a compact compendium of Christian faith. As for the author, the picture that emerges is that of a highly intelligent, extremely sensitive, easily annoyed controversialist.

Gatsby obviously is a very different story. What is it about? An innocent soul swimming among sharks, I suppose. Whether you are prepared to believe Gatsby—who made a fortune as a bootlegger, after all—is as innocent as Fitzgerald wants you to believe is a question readers must answer for themselves.

Russell Shaw is the author of more than 20 books.

Piers Shepherd:

I have been doing a lot of research and reading on church history this year in preparation for potentially teaching a course on the subject. There were three works I particularly enjoyed:

History of the Catholic Church from the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium by James Hitchcock. This is a large but easy to read work with each chapter very helpfully divided into sections and subheadings that make the book very easy to navigate.

The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch is a very thorough history of its subject covering the period from 1490 to around 1700 and spanning most of the countries of Europe. The effect of the Reformation on theology, philosophy and social life, including marriage and the family, is discussed in great detail.

The Story of Civilization Part VI: The Reformation by Will Durant. The sixth part in this famous 11 volume series is less a history of the Reformation than a general history of Europe from 1300 to 1564. In addition to the religious controversies of the 16th century, this book also covers topics such as the Hundred Years War, the discovery of the New World, the wars of Europe against the Ottoman Empire and the development of art and science.

This year I also re-read two books for the first time in around 20 years.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Corrêa de Oliveira was a Brazilian philosopher and intellectual, and this was his most important book. Writing in 1959, he diagnosed the crisis of the modern age as having its roots in three great revolutions: the Reformation, the French Revolution and Communism. At the core of what Corrêa de Oliveira called the ‘the Revolution’ was a belief in radical egalitarianism and radical sensuality. In opposition to this he proposed a counter-revolution that was embodied in the principals of the organization he founded, the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

The Abolition of Britain by Peter Hitchens. First published in 1999, this book brilliantly surveys the decline of Britain since the 1960s covering a variety of areas including religion, morality, popular culture, education and the decimation of Britain’s towns and cities among others. The problems Hitchens describes are now much more advanced than they were in 1999 but the book provides a useful background to the current malaise.

Piers Shepherd is a freelance writer currently based in Colombia.

Richard Spinello:

The Crisis of Modernityby Augusto Del Noce

The Italian philosopher, Augosto Del Noce (1910-1989) was known for his prophetic vision and his disdain for the imperialistic claims of scientism and technology. His work is especially relevant as we wallow in this era of secular triumphalism. Del Noce had a genius for anticipating cultural trends such as the emergence of same-sex marriage. He also predicted the transition from “ascetic Christianity” to a more “secularized” Christianity that wipes away from the horizon the “passive and mortifying virtues” such as chastity and purity. Del Noce calls for a retrieval of the “primacy of contemplation” and the “primacy of the immutable” as a remedy for what ails our ambient modern culture.

The Universe as Journeyby Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

There was a time when the intellectual giants who roamed the campuses of Jesuit universities were the Jesuits themselves. Such was the case at Fordham University when I was a graduate philosophy student there many decades ago. One of those giants was Fr. Clarke, who taught Thomistic philosophy and metaphysics for over 30 years. This past year I re-read his magnificent book which recounts his own pilgrimage towards the comprehension of all being in one sweeping synoptic vision that captures the inner harmony of the universe. Like all good metaphysicians, Fr. Clarke had a passion for unity, for seeing how all things in the universe fit together as an intelligible whole. In St. Thomas, he found the key for unlocking that unity through a “conversion to existence,” that is, a recognition of each being’s own inner act of existence as the underlying bond of all reality.

Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla (trans. G. Ignatik)

Each year I make a point of re-reading this treatise on sexual morality written by St. John Paul II well before he became pope. In his “Letter to Families” the Pope wrote that we are living in a crisis of truth where the word “love” no longer “conveys its essential meaning.” We witness that confusion every day in the use of facile epithets such as “love is love” or “love wins.” But anyone who wants to understand what love really is should read and ponder this book. Love is complex and multifaceted, and Wojtyla’s treatise can help dissipate the confusion that has become so pervasive in the Church. This book is a true classic that enriches primarily through its deep wisdom and principled reasoning rather than moral prescription.

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Lest anyone think that I spend all my time reading philosophy books, I also read many history books and enjoy the works of great American historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book chronicles her husband’s (Richard Goodwin) career as speech writer for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Unlike their contemporary counterparts, classically trained speech writers like Goodwin and his mentor Ted Sorensen knew how to compose brilliant speeches that had both style and substance. Kennedy and Johnson could not have been more different in background, temperament, or leadership traits, but Goodwin was able to satisfy both of them. The drama of this work is provided by compelling accounts of Kennedy’s assassination and Johnson’s collision with the shoals of Vietnam. Good history books like this one are very important since we must always live in the light of the past.

Richard A. Spinello is Professor at Boston College and the author of Four Catholic Philosophers: Rejoicing in the Truth (Jacques Maritain, Edith Stein, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Karol Wojtyla).

Edward Short:

Over the years, we have all encountered books calling for a renewal of Catholic education but what sets R. Jared Staudt’s Words Made Flesh: The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education (2024) apart is its coherence, learning and practicality. Here is a book not only for Catholic school educators but every parent keen on seeing their children’s formation in the Faith govern and enrich all their learning. “If we are unsatisfied with the state of society and the Church, then prioritizing the education of our children is the best way to make an impact for the future,” Staudt writes. Why? “Catholic education aims at the complete formation of the person – body, mind and soul – and no education could be complete that forms only a part of the person.” Like Christopher Dawson, whose The Crisis of Western Education (1961) is very much worth reading, Staudt recognizes that in order for Catholic education to thrive, Catholic culture must thrive, and on nearly every page of this admirable book we see an eloquent call for a revival of this culture, so distinct from the philistinism that mars too many of our schools. If such practical wisdom were adopted by our Catholic schools, we would see an altogether vital transformation of them.

Another book I would commend is J.K. Huysmans’ The Crowds of Lourdes (1925). At this incomparable place of pilgrimage, the convert writes towards the end of the book, “you see a renewal of the Gospels; you are in a lazaretto for souls in which you are disinfected with the antiseptic of charity… Here is the Virgin both compassionate and sweet, and here she seems… more loving and nearer… than she does anywhere else.”

Readers interested in learning more about this extraordinary convert should read Robert Baldick’s superb Life of J.K. Huysmans (1956). Still another book worth recommending is John McManners’ two-volume Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France (1998), which is brilliant on the Jesuits, Jansenists and Dominicans, as well as bishops and curés of that tempestuous age. Not all Catholic readers will agree with the Anglican McManners, who dismisses the dogmatic principle so dear to Newman by arguing that: ‘Doctrines should look forward to the time nearer than we think for each of us, when they will have no further meaning,” reasoning that would lead to our neglecting, not attending to our destined end – an end necessarily replete with doctrine. Nevertheless, McManners is an engaging historian, not only because of his redoubtable scholarship but his humility.

In his preface to his excellent Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (1991), he was careful to say vis-à-vis the different contributors to the volume something that our deluded historicists should take to heart. “Each of us could have written an epilogue,” McManners confessed, “but it would not have been as an historian.” Of course, history commands a useful place in our study of the Faith but never as any rival to Revelation. As Dom Adrian Morey wrote of the great church historian David Knowles: “He… believed that for the man who would penetrate and understand the truths of faith and the ways of God, a knowledge of history is, after the study of the scriptures and theology, the most valuable of all mental possessions.” Here, after is the indispensable word.

Lastly, these other books caught my fancy: John Witheridge’s elegant, revelatory Alice’s Father: The Life of Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford (2024); Richard Symonds’ witty Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (1986); James A. Harris’ fascinating Hume: An Intellectual Biography (2015); and Anne Somerset’s Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers (2024), a welcome revisiting of a theme memorably essayed in 1953 by Lord Salisbury’s third son, Algernon Cecil.

Edward Short is the author, most recently, of Newman and his Critics, the final volume of his trilogy on Newman

Carl R. Trueman:

Only one of my Books of the Year was published in 2024. That was Calming the Storm of Images, Philip Jenkins’s fine and illuminating study of the iconoclastic controversies in the early church, up to and beyond the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Jenkins does an excellent job of putting to death many common myths and simplistic pieties regarding the role of images in Christianity and also Judaism and Islam. What emerges is a much more subtle and politically complicated picture than later partisan approaches would suggest.

On the fiction front, the best book I read this year was Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. In this work Wharton offers both a fine portrait of social and class tensions in late nineteenth-century America and a compelling analysis of the tragic psychology of an ambitious young woman, Lily Bart. Lily is simultaneously superficial and entitled while at the same time psychologically complex. Her decline, downfall and the ambiguous circumstances of her death make the book a deeply sad read, although along the way the reader is challenged to think about what really matters in life. Given that America today is perhaps even more driven by money and social ambition than it was when Wharton wrote, even if now in the context of a world where celebrity rather than social class provides the framework, this is a work with a remarkably contemporary feel.

On the non-fiction front, I finally settled down in the summer to read Mary Dearborn’s biography of Ernest Hemingway. I love Hemingway’s writing, or at least the short stories and the early novels – Fiesta and A Farewell to Arms – and so I read Dearborn eager to find reasons to love Hemingway the man, too. I came away feeling nothing but sadness for a tragic figure who produced his best work early and then squandered his talents through excessive drinking and an unfailing ability to treat with vituperative contempt those who loved him, especially women. Particularly sad was Dearborn’s account of his relationship with that other precocious but ultimately disappointing talent, F. Scott Fitzgerald. By the time he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, the writing was as flabby as the man, and the mental decline that led to his suicide in 1961 already evident. Pity, not admiration, was all that I felt by the end of the book.

Finally, on the devotional front, I benefited greatly from reading Khaled Anatolios’s lively collection of homilies, Feasts for the Kingdom: Sermons for the Liturgical Year. Of course, as a Protestant, I do not agree with everything he says, but these brief chapters both demonstrate how a rich Nicene theology connects to everyday life in the twenty-first century and how a common commitment to the Trinitarian God offers ecumenical edification for those who care to reflect upon it. Definitely a book to give to that special Nicene Trinitarian in your life this Christmas.

Carl Trueman teaches humanities at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and is the author of several books, including The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

John Tuttle:

My reading achievements are somewhat diminished of late. The reason: My blessings have greatly increased recently. My wife Ellen and I were married August 31st! The months leading up to the wedding required my time and energy be given to more pressing matters than the press. This is not to say that reading is bad – if carried out in moderation.

In The Way, St. Josemaría Escrivá reminds us, “Don’t neglect your spiritual reading. Reading has made many saints.” Very early in the book, Escrivá lauds matrimony as a vocation, says your spiritual director can recommend a good book to prepare you for it, and also says, “Commend yourself to St. Raphael that he may keep you pure, as he did Tobias, until the end of the way.” Thus, Ellen and I found ourselves reading through the Book of Tobit in the weeks leading up to marriage.

Books like The Way – ones that give me bite-sized snippets – have been more of my bread and butter this past year given my limited time (and limited attention span). For a few years now, I’ve enjoyed Dawn Marie Beutner’s Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year for both personal use and research purposes. Butler’s Lives of the Saints is considered the classic standard collection of saints’ biographies in miniature, but Beutner’s book covers more saints and blesseds, sometimes relying on Butler’s Lives as a source. I dislike how the revised edition of Butler’s Lives (HarperOne, 1991) offers an index of saints and their feast days much wider in scope than the actual compendium’s biographies. The result is lengthy index, most of the entries of which have no details provided for them in the book. In contrast, Beutner’s Saints is helpful and delightful.

At night, I often read a few passages from Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words, compiled and translated by Willard Trask. Most mornings see me reading a snippet from the author of Charlotte’s Web taken from E.B. White: Writings from the New Yorker 1927-1976, edited by Rebecca M. Dale. White is brimming with wit and panache. His memoirs, observations, commentaries, and reflections are as enjoyable as his fiction – if not more so.

Adding to my literary diet throughout the year has been A Year with C.S. Lewis (a gift from my brother years ago) and Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex, translated by Michel Mok and Ralph Manheim. Unlike many, I was never introduced to Anne Frank in middle school. This served as my introduction. The Secret Annex showcases how phenomenal of a storyteller Frank was – even as a young teenager. In stories like “The Wise Old Dwarf” and “The Fairy,” Frank has no qualms about blending faith in God and mythical worlds together. In her imagination, fairies tell of God’s presence and children regularly attend chapel in an elven village, presided over by a dwarf-preacher. What could be more beautiful? These are the kinds of stories I want to tell my children at bedtime.

One book I was able to begin and complete this year was Prayers from the Ark and The Creatures’ Choir penned by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, translated by Rumer Godden. All the poems are from the perspective of different species of animals and serve as their individual prayers to God. In many of these, de Gasztold evokes the attitude of the animal and illustrates its relation to the Creator. Her “Prayer of the Donkey” serves as a good Christmas reflection. “Give me great courage and gentleness./One day let somebody understand me…,” prays the donkey. And in the end: “… Lord, one day, let me find again/my little brother of the Christmas crib.” Of course, both parts of that prayer are answered in Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. “The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” (Matthew 21:6-8).

John Tuttle has a BA in journalism & mass communications and theology from Benedictine College.

Joseph Tuttle:

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend Holy Week this year in Seville, Spain. While there, I made a day trip to Granada, specifically, the Alhambra – the last Muslim fortress taken by Queen Isabella in 1492. It was here that she met with Christopher Columbus and agreed to fund his voyage to the Indies – and we all know how that ended. I discovered that an American author, Washington Irving, had spent a good deal of time there and wrote a book called Tales of the Alhambra, which I purchased and read. It is a wonderful mix of history and the mysterious legends and myths that surround the old fortress. On the topic of Spain, I read Warren Carroll’s Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, a historical account of Hernan Cortes and his journeys in Central America. He paints Cortes in a rather positive light. He doesn’t shy away from pointing out Cortes’ mistakes and imperfections. He does, however, note his primary goal: to bring the Catholic Faith to the new world and end both human sacrificing and cannibalism – both of which were practiced by the Aztecs, and both of which go against the natural law. He attributes Cortes’ success to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared not too long after his mission.

During Holy Week, aside from taking part in the amazing processions that take place in Seville, I also read St. Robert Bellarmine’s The Seven Last Words Spoken from the Cross. They are excellent theological reflections on the Seven Last Words of Christ. Bellarmine pulls largely from the Church Fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas to expound upon his meditations.

From Fulton J. Sheen, I read The Mystical Body of Christ – and excellent text and one of the few academic works of Sheen, written early in his career. His great book on marriage, Three to Get Married, was also completed. It is an excellent book for married couples and one that I gave to my newly wed brother and sister-in-law. I also read Bonnie Engstrom’s book, 61 Minutes to a Miracle, about the miracle that was approved for Sheen’s beatification. It is a short read but one that truly shows the intercessory power of one of the greatest Churchmen of the twentieth century. Another Sheen piece came in the form of Fr. Dave Tomaszycki’s book On the Demonic – a new book of Sheen’s own writings and words regarding the demonic in our world and how to fight against it.

This year I was able to get a good amount of fiction in. Louis de Wohl’s fantastic tale of Constantine and St. Helena, The Living Wood, also made it on to my reading list. As usual, De Wohl delivers a novel that has all the notes of a secular production: romance, suspense, action, etc., but with one difference. His story centers around a saint: Helena, who made it her life’s mission to find the Cross of Jesus Christ. As always, De Wohl weaves a story around the historical accounts and traditions surrounding Constantine and Helena. Another book was Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, a recent translation of the original Godzilla stories that the original Toho Studios produced in 1954 and 1955. Admittedly, there were a number of typos and sometimes the translation seemed rather choppy – but, it is a must read for true fans of the original Godzilla movies.

Joseph Tuttle is the author of An Hour with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (Ligouri, 2021). He has a B.A. in theology from Benedictine College.

Timothy Vail:

Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy: How God Prepared the Americas for Conversion Before the Lady Appeared
by Joseph Gonzalez & Monique González

Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father by Father Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC

From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age by the University of Mary

The Conferences of John Cassian by John Cassian

Controversies of the Christian Faith by St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, S.J.

Dialectics: A Class Manual in Formal Logic by Right Rev. Msgr. Paul J. Glenn, Ph.D., S.T.D.

Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper (I have read this a few times)

Akita: The Tears and Message of Mary by Father Teiji Yasuda

The Libellus by Blessed Jordan of Saxony

Maria van den Bosch:

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
On first reading Lewis’ retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche twenty years ago, I narrowly (and self-centeredly) overidentified with the protagonist’s complaint against the gods. Re-reading the novel this year, I realized I had completely misunderstood it. Till We Have Faces wrestles with the mystery of suffering and the darkness that enshrouds divinity. Lewis himself regarded it as his best book.

Summa Theologica: Prima Pars by St Thomas Aquinas
This year, I began a project to read the Summa from beginning to end and discuss it with friends. It has been a slog. I am not always sure if I truly grasp Aquinas’ arguments or only think I do. Our pace has slowed to the point where it may take a decade to complete. Despite all this, it has been more than worth the effort. The goal was to build an understanding (even a limited one) of the metaphysics that are foundational for St Thomas’ anthropology and virtue ethics. The end is not in sight, but the journey is richly rewarding.

The Love that Keeps Us Sane: Living the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux by Marc Foley, O.C.D.
Fr. Foley writes that his book is not about growing in holiness as much as it is about achieving psychological wholeness. Through examples from St Therese’s life and writings, Foley illustrates how we can imitate Therese in loving others selflessly without making their approval of us into an idol. Ultimately, the book helps us to be rooted in our identity in Christ, and love others from that place, rather than making our human relationships the core of our identity. It is challenging, engaging, and comes in at less than a hundred pages.

Light Over the Scaffold and Cell 18: The Prison Letters of Jacques Fesch
In 1957, twenty-seven-year-old Jacques Fesch was executed for the crime of murdering a police officer. His collected letters document the process of deep conversion Fesch underwent during his years of incarceration: the anguish of his dark night of the soul, his mystical understanding of Christ’s love, his radical detachment and surrender, the consolation he offers to those who ostensibly are writing to console him.

In 1993, the Church declared Jacques Fesch a Servant of God. Not to anticipate the Church’s beatification process, but Fesch would be a powerful intercessor for many today. For those with father wounds, abuse victims, sufferers from addiction in their personal or family lives, perpetrators of violent crimes, the incarcerated, all who bear the anguish of psychological trauma: Fesch is a relatable example of one who carried all these crosses, threw himself on the mercy of God, and became holy in his brokenness. He is, God willing, a saint for our times.

The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
A debate on suicide between a character with a brilliantly articulate defense of nihilism and one who loves humanity but has no education, tightly crafted arguments, or fancy vocabulary to assist him.

How does one combat evil’s apparent triumph? What do you do when you know God’s given you a task but doesn’t appear to have equipped you for it? Why does the voice of goodness and truth seem to fail in the face of profound suffering?

McCarthy’s play grapples with these questions and provides no simple or overt answers. Ultimately, the cry of suffering in The Sunset Limited is one directed to, (in the words of St John of the Cross), a God whose first language is silence. There is terrifying beauty in this play, but it’s only reached by wandering through darkness.

Maria van den Bosch writes and works as a tutor in Alberta, Canada. She holds degrees in history and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.:

Since the death of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), there have been a number of edited books of essays that have treated various aspects of his theological corpus. However, Mauro Gagliardi’s Revelation, Hermeneutic, and Doctrinal Development in Joseph Ratzinger is the first book, to my knowledge, to assess almost the entirety of Ratzinger’s work. Gagliardi has mastered Ratzinger’s theology, and presents it in a manner that is clear and yet scholarly. He creatively and insightfully allows the reader to appreciate the thought of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant theologians. This is an excellent introductory book both for the academic and for the lay reader.

Mike Aquilina is a prodigious writer, and he is ingenious at choosing topics that the average person would never consider. In his Rabbles, Riots and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized has added another interesting and informative book to his list. Some of the twelve cities he examines are: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Constantinople, Ravenna, and Carthage. If one is looking for a book that is simply entertaining and even fun to read, this book would fit the bill.

My fascination with the Habsburg’s continues. The last Habsburg emperor is singular in that he is a Blessed and his cause for canonization continues – Emperor Charles of Austria and Hungary. Charles Coulombe has authored an excellent biography: Blessed Charles of Austria: A Holy Emperor and His Legacy. He provides the historical and political background the Charles’s brief reign. He also examines Charles’s childhood and education. What I found most fascinating and inspiring was his marriage to Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma. When Charles married her, he said that together they must now strive to make each other holy. Not a common sentiment for a young groom to express to his newly wedded bride. Charles suffered much during World War I as he worked for peace. With the end of the war, he hoped to establish a political arrangement similar to that in Great Britain – a parliamentary government along with a monarchy. This was not to be. Thus, he was exiled both in Switzerland and on the island of Maderia. He died of pneumonia at the age of 34. Ironically, Charles’ cause for canonization finds its greatest supporters among Catholics in the United States.

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap. is a noted American theologian and the author of several books.

Amy Welborn:

I had three contemporary novels that were standouts, as well as one classic that I belatedly, finally, got around to reading.

Since academic satire is just about my favorite genre, I couldn’t resist The English Experience by Julie Schumacher. It’s a short, hilarious novel about a professor who unenthusiastically chaperones his college’s winter term study abroad in London.

His students are, of course, a varied crew, a couple of whom have actual academic capabilities. The clever aspect of the novel is how much of the tale is told through the students’ daily assignments. The revelations are not direct, though. As would be the case, the students’ writings expose the young people sometimes indirectly – even stylistically and even through their mistakes – and sometimes in the unexpected, blunt way a young person expresses himself.

It’s sharp, cutting and in the end accepting of the mystery of human life – where we came from and where we’re going – and how the weird experiences we have in the present between that past and future have the power to shift our vision and sense of ourselves – for the better, if we’re paying attention.

Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler is about just that: the first year of young man’s sobriety. He’s been kicked out of his parents’ home and spends most of the year couch-surfing through Philadelphia, encountering friends and acquaintances, old and new.

The writing was sharp, knowing, and funny. And – guess what – as we approach the end, there’s a Catholic element. A couple, in fact. I won’t say what they are, but one of them is related to a big Catholic event that occurred in Philadelphia over the past decade.

Early Sobrieties was a novel about addiction and recovery, yes, but even if that’s not your issue, directly or indirectly, Monk’s journey is applicable. For even if our past actions and our memories of those actions were not warped and wiped out by substances, who doesn’t look back at the past and wonder, why in the world did I do that? Who was that person anyway? Because that sure doesn’t feel as if it’s me. And can I fix it? Can I atone?

Those were good, but it’s The Wedding People by Alison Espach that wins the year for me.

Phoebe is in her early 40’s. Her husband has left her for a colleague, a colleague who has a baby, and Phoebe has, after years of trying and fertility treatments, not been able to have that: a baby. She’s also an adjunct professor of English literature whose specialty is the Victorian marriage novel, but who has, after ten years of work, not managed to finish writing a book.

So Phoebe arrives at an inn in Newport, RI, having never seen the ocean (she’s from St. Louis), with a goal: in this most beautiful place, a “happy place” of her imagination, she’s going to commit suicide.

In her way: the wedding people.

For this inn has been completely booked for a week-long wedding celebration. Completely booked, that is, but for the one room – a penthouse suite, no less – that is open, at $800/night, for Phoebe’s intended one-night stay.

It’s not spoiling much to tell you that no, Phoebe does not succeed in her goal, and ends up staying the entire week, her stay paid for by Lila, the bride-to-be, who immediately and almost inexplicably befriends Phoebe after an elevator mishap. Perhaps she senses a connection, perhaps she’s relieved to have someone to talk (and talk and talk) to who’s not in the wedding party, and perhaps she’s also determined that this Phoebe person Will. Not. Ruin. Her. Wedding.

And so it goes, a sly reworking of the Marriage Plot, surprises, accidental (or not) encounters, repressed feelings, unexpected connections, feeling trapped and finding release from that trap and all. The writing is just so sharp and knowing and it’s very, very funny.

At its heart, it’s an unexpectedly moving novel about discovering that your life does matter a great deal in ways you might not even know. Whether you live or die? Whether you continue to live in the story or not? What part you play in it? Yeah, it matters. And how do you discover that? Through opening up and moving beyond your own bubble and even your own very real pain to listen and connect with the pain of others, and, most importantly extending compassion towards those others – and perhaps asking on the way – why can’t I extend this compassion and grace to myself, as well?

Once in a while, you see articles or social media posts in which people admit what classic novels they haven’t read. I’d have … a few on that list, but I knocked one off this year: Moby Dick. 

Perhaps it’s unfortunate that I hadn’t read it before now, but as I immersed myself in Melville’s philosophical, brutal, absorbing layers of prose that seemed almost postmodern, I found myself thinking perhaps not. Perhaps this was exactly the right time, after all.

Amy Welborn is a writer living in Birmingham, Alabama. She is the author of many books, including Loyola Kids Book of Feasts, Seasons and Celebrations.

Chilton Williamson:

A long-time admirer of Romano Guardini, I had already read his Letters from Lake Como, The End of the Modern World, and Power and Responsibility before taking up his 629-page (in Regnery’s Gateway edition) magnum opus, The Lord, best described as a meditative biography of Jesus Christ. As the author himself states, the component meditations “make no claim to completeness. They do not attempt to recount Jesus’ life in any chronological order or logical sequence; rather, they select from it this or that teaching, event, trait, miracle for thought, as it happens to warm to life. This book is no scientific documentation of history or theology. Its chapters are the spiritual commentaries of some four years of Sunday services undertaken with the sole purpose of obeying as well as possible the Lord’s command to proclaim him, his message and works.” The chapters are richly compact without being dense and written with a remarkably light touch despite Msgr. Guardini’s enormous erudition and breathtaking recall of texts. They pair superbly with Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth volumes, so that it is entirely fitting that the late Pope should have supplied the introduction to Guardini’s book.

I am reading several chapters nightly. The reason is not the sustained effort and attention they demand, but the fact that they deserve patient reflection on the part of the reader after he has read them. The Lord is a book by a man whose piety equals his truly astounding Biblical learning and qualities of poetical imagination.

Chilton Williamson, Jr. is the author of several works of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and “pure” nonfiction, including After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! A Novel and The End of Liberalism (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023). He has also written hundreds of essays, critical reviews, and short stories.

Tod Worner:

Before I begin listing the books I consumed this year, I want to draw attention to two habits of reading that have warred with each other since the beginning of the written word. The first is the insistent habit of reading one book — an only one book – at a time. The second is the defiant habit of reading multiple books at a time. Adherents of the first habit exult in their disciplined singularity of mind and their proud claim to finish books rather quickly. Subscribers to the second habit, offer a healthy “Bronx cheer” to the “one-book-at-a-timers” gleefully jumping from a biography on Churchill to a coffee table book on Monty Python, and shamelessly springing from the nineteenth century’s Pride & Prejudice to the twentieth century’s A Gentleman in Moscow.

With that throat-clearing concluded, I can openly admit: I am an unapologetic “many-books-at-oncer.”

So what did I read simultaneously this year? A pretty good mix!

William F. Buckley’s Inveighing We Will Go is a wonderful older collection of essays and interviews with the suave, yet cheeky founder of National Review and host of Firing Line. Buckley is so generous in his Firing Line interviews that you seldom get to hear him exposit on any topics at length. Reading Buckley’s essays (especially his opening Playboy interview) allows you to enjoy Buckley’s rapier-like wit and canny insights, all while enjoying, in your mind’s ear, his charming mid-Atlantic accent.

Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon was Ken Khachigian’s gripping memoir of speech-writing and maneuvering in the highest corridors of power. I had the privilege of interviewing Ken on The Evangelization & Culture Podcast and found his insights and anecdotes captivating.

Carl Trueman’s recently released To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse is an indispensable explication of the origins of Critical Theory and its philosophical godfathers including Marx, Lukacs, Korsch, and the Frankfurt School. Trueman demystifies Marxist ideas like “alienation,” “reification,” and “false consciousness” and shines a light on this ideology’s scorched earth plan, which offers no positive program.

Poetry caught my eye this year with James Matthew Wilson’s St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, Sally Read’s 100 Great Catholic Poems, and Ryan Wilson and April Lindner’s Contemporary Catholic Poetry. These works offer samples of outstanding poetry that also happen to have a Catholic sensibility — something the modern world is sorely in need of. Seamus Heaney’s Station Island was also a delight.

Fr. Damian Ference dazzled with Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, a philosophical engagement with the ingenious Flannery O’Connor. How this young woman could arrive at such profound truths and unfold them in such searing literature is still staggering to me.

My spiritual director has recommended I re-approach St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s spiritual memoir, Story of a Soul. Just when I get too big for my britches, the Little Flower gently, lovingly thwacks me on the noggin.

As I am running out of room, let me offer the classics I have read this year, including: Shakespeare’s Richard II, & Henry IV (part I & II). Henry V is underway. I have read the entire Henriad previously, but the dictum is true: “The first time you read something, you discover what happens. The next time you read it, you know what it means.” The spiritual classic I read again was G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I have read Orthodoxy close to twenty times. I was clueless the first time and stunned (yet again) on my latest read.

There are several books I cannot remember, but I am currently finishing Gary Saul Morson’s magnificent Wonder Confronts Certainty, Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s first volume of Theo-Drama.

Lastly, could I give a plug? If, like me, you are a touch hypomanic and can’t get enough of the infinite offerings out there, then add in essays. Joseph Epstein, Gary Saul Morson, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling are good places to start. And don’t forget those offered by CWR!

Tod Worner is a practicing internal medicine physician, Managing Editor of Bishop Robert Barron’s journal, Evangelization & Culture, and Host of Word on Fire’s The Evangelization & Culture Podcast.