Notre Dame Books

This book is a reflective series of essays that grew out of a lecture tour to various American universities that Nogar, a deceased Dominican priest, made in 1964. Here he rejects the cosmic optimism he advocated in his earlier book "The Wisdom of Evolution" and faces squarely the wasteful and destructive picture of the evolutionary origin of human life. Nogar no longer embraces the orderly and harmonious cosmos of Teilhard de Chardin: "The God of the strange world of Father Teilhard is is not the one that I have come to believe in. His is the God of the neat; mine is the God of the messy. His God governs with unerring efficiency: mine provides with inexcusable waste. His God is the Lord of order; my God is the Lord of the Absurd." Anyone who has gone beyond the inanities of the current "creationist" or "intelligent design" arguments but is still attempting to reconcile some form of Christianity with evolutionary origins of life and humanity will find Nogar's insights well worth considering.

An extensively researched and carefully reasoned study of the institutions and forces that shaped a phase of Italian history, Lordship, Reform, And The Development Of Civil Society In Medieval Italy: The Bishopric Of Orvieto, 1100-1250 is a scholarly analysis of a small Italian commune during the High Middle Ages. Exploring feudal revolution, ecclesiastical reform, and state building, as well as offer-ing a direct challenge to conclusions that overemphasize the secular nature of Italian city-states by pointing out how ecclesiastical institutions influenced the political and religious culture of communes, Lordship, Reform, And The Development Of Civil Society In Medieval Italy is a work of superb scholarship and a welcome addition to academic library Middle Ages studies and World History reference collections.

This is the most complete book on Vierne to date. Highly recommended. The majority of the book is Vierne's own Memoirs translated into english. The remainder constists of some analization of the organ works, textual corrections of the symphonies, improvisation themes written by Vierne, etc. Most complete, and a fanscinating read as well as being highly useful. No organist should be without a copy!

Tourism, aided by easy Chunnel access, has made World War One's Western Front a significant British tourist destination. Veterans groups and family history researchers have joined history buffs and day trippers to make the battlefields, cemeteries, and memorials of the Great War a busy place. Predictably, sites associated with British and Commonwealth forces have been especially favored. While it always helps to know Flemish or French, neither are necessary to visit Ieper (French Ypres, British slang Wipers), Vimy, or the Somme where English is a second language.

If you're planning such a trip, you'll quickly encounter Tonie and Valmai Holt. Their numerous books and maps (twenty-three at last count, and growing) are the standard against which other battlefield guides are judged. Start with this volume (and its companion, The Western Front - South) and you'll be on your way. The Holts have driven all the fields, and provide detailed maps and directions to take you on the roads and tracks that cross them. {They assume you brought your car from Britain, and provide all their distances in miles rather than kilometers.} They miss very little. Tiny cemeteries, roadside shrines, wall plaques, and local amenities are all here (and keep in mind there are well over 100 cemeteries maintained just by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.). It sometimes gets a bit overpowering, and the casual traveler may want to consult a "best of" list or focus upon the sites that the Holts illustrate with attractive color photos that make this a fine souvenir of any trip. Be aware that their guides can send you to some moving experiences that are off the main paths: their advice at the Somme took us to the Devonshire Trench Cemetery and the 38th (Welsh) Division Memorial.

Their books are obviously works for the tourist. The Holts offer only brief historical summaries, so you will want to read a good general history of the 1914-1918 war before heading out. {We recommend John Keegan's Pictorial History of World War One, but there are many others.} You also need to remember that the Belgians and French, while welcoming visitors, want to live modern lives in the areas liberated from the Kaiser's forces. Surprisingly few sites retain the "feel" of the trenches (the Holts will steer you to them), and cemeteries and memorials far outnumber museums. The Holts admire valor and sacrifice, and they will tell you why those sites deserve respect. Some of their harshest criticisms are directed at those who poorly maintain a site. Two weeks and nearly a thousand kilometers of driving this summer from Ieper to St. Mihiel with the Holts convinced us they are the guides of choice. Take them with you when you go back to the Front.

Are we free? Most of us feel free. Our culture operates as if we are free and responsible for our freely chosen actions. Yet, the popular wisdom in philosophical circles today is that we are not free. Any feelings of freedom are illusions. In reality, all of us are determined to be what we are by causes beyond our control. What are these causes? How did we loose control of our own destiny? Did we ever have any control of our destiny? Is fate a play we all are acting in with a script not of our own choosing? Is the script dictated by god, genetics, psychology, or some other unknown factor outside our control? Is there room for an individual acting as a free agent in there somewhere?

James Felt has written a remarkable book, that concisely puts forth the view that we are free to make choices independent of the multitude of influences that clutter our decision making process. Determinism in its various forms is exposed as baseless dogma. Dogma built on the shifting sands of faulty presuppositions and unsound logic. The book is written in language accessable to the general reader. Many footnotes and a suggested reading list guide you, if, you desire to dig deeper into the points he discusses. He avoids any theological arguments and sticks to philosophy and metaphysics. Yet, the book progresses beyond the abstract and brings the freedom issue to where we live: the Libertarian free philosophy should clarify our response to the problem of evil. And our rational understanding of our personal freedom should cause us to realize that we are responsible for determining our own character. The concept of agency puts responsibility on our shoulders. We are fully culpable. This sobering fact should drive any thinking person straight to the Cross of Christ, where the blood of our risen Saviour redeems us and truly sets us free...

Judaism and Christianity are religious communities bound together by rituals of commemoration reaffirming to each its identity in the present through images and words from the past. During the 20th century, both Jews and Christians have engaged in a creative dialogue with historical disciplines and held conversations significantly altering their respective approaches to theological and religious language. Modernity undermined naive conjunctions between memory and ritualization, challenging the validity of memory grounded in the authority of divine revelation. In Memory And History In Christianity And Judaism, Michael Signer has gathered together an informative array of very highly recommended essays and responses by erudite and knowledgeable contributors affirming the difficulty and desirability of lining history and memory with the context of the Jewish and Christian communities.

This amazingly complex book is a tough read, at least for me, but I'm finding it exceptionally worth the trouble. Those with previous exposure to the concepts and language of 'imagology' or 'image studies' (the role of cultural perceptions and identity constructs in international literary and cultural traffic) will no doubt have a much shallower learning curve than I do.

It's definitely not beginner material - but in my opinion this book deserves its reputed 'cult status' as an exceptional study of the growth of Irish national identity.

I discovered during a long-ago stint reading US history in a Norwegian gymnasium that there's nothing quite like a friendly outsider to shed new light on where one's national myths and streeotypes might have originated. This thorough and loving examination of Ireland's many representations does exactly that in a fully documented, carefully woven, full-meal of a book.

Dr. Leerson, a Dutch citizen,is Professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

splendidly written. best book I've read in Am Ch History and I've read a few hundred. How O'Connell managed to keep all the scandals under control
is itself a mystery.

This book is a beautifully written treatise on man-legislated law in the Roman Catholic Church today. It includes an invaluable historical perspective that could be complete all on its own. Father McKenna uses the ever controversial issues of confidentiality, marriage annulment and human rights, to explore the concepts of law underlying the complex workings of this universal church. Catholic Canon Law, set out in the Code of Canon Law, is probably the only universal system of law in the world. Despite the global nature and dimensions of our world today, that is a complicated concept. This dessertation sets out the map for the basic concepts and leaves the reader hoping Father McKenna explores more such issues in the future.

My then-10-year-old and I bought this little book at the Louvre and she loved it. Its combination of paintings, line drawings, and anecdotal stories of each monument or place makes it attractive to both child and adult. I use it as my guide to what I must see in Paris.