Summer Reading
Hunt, George W.
George W. Hunt George W. Hunt, S.J., is editor of America. ince these are suggestions for summer, allow me to begin by recommending a group of small books, the sort that can be held between...
...That "lightning" of enthusiasm permeates his memoir, and his passion and dedication to his art will induce a reader to beg, borrow, or steal every Solti recording available...
...Don't miss this book: It will enliven not only your intellectual but your spiritual life...
...Here, through telling anecdote and cleft narrative, he traces papal history from its humble beginnings with Saint Peter, through the death of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages (of crusades and Inquisition), the Renaissance and Reformation, the post-Tridentine era up to today's end of the second millennium...
...This is an excellent biography by Terry Golway, a columnist for the New York Observer and (ahem) America magazine, of John Devoy who for over half a century was "Irish America's conscience, referee and, most of all, chief organizer...
...and on the history of Catholicism in the various states...
...He describes how, as a boy of fourteen, he was "hit Commonweal 2 5 June 19,1998 by lightning" on hearing Erich Kleiber conduct Beethoven's Fifth and how his fate was sealed...
...What's more, all can be finished in three hours or so without the impulse for twisting about on a beach towel, hammock, or lawn chair...
...The last three I recommend are very big books, not easy to pick up but even more difficult to put down...
...His quest is both romantic and specific: Where is Jimmy Hoffa's body...
...This is a book recounted with continental charm and modesty about the pleasures of addiction (to music...
...But Sullivan, gifted with the historian's heart, can still see it as "America's first West" when it was alive with cedar trees---unlike its present state as a garbage dump for chemicals and assorted waste...
...This volume is not only a welcome resource but an easy read, to boot...
...Turnpike...
...and his later triumphs as a conductor in Munich, Frankfurt, Covent Garden, and then Chicago...
...Or why is it that, today in Washington, D.C., tax lobbyists now number more than 125 per member of Congress...
...The third is a book about America's national debt...
...will be his most indispensable for nonexperts in the New Testament...
...Only someone as sly and passionate as Sullivan could discover endless adventure in exploring the inaptly named "Meadowlands," a euphemism for the swampland in northern New Jersey that is the fly-over entrance to Newark Airport...
...His erudition, lucid prose, fairness in judgment, and remarkable good sense are evident everywhere...
...The fourth book is only slightly bigger...
...Don't leave home without these...
...one casual munch and the reader is hooked for hours-and, better, nourished as well...
...The usual suspects--bishops, writers, founders of congregations--are all here, their lives recounted in graceful essays...
...No, wait...
...Last is an even more handsome but lighter (in both senses) book, Eamon Duff~ s Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale, $30,326 pp...
...Golway's narrative pace is swift and sure, as is his ability to establish clearly both context and argument--a godsend for American readers whose heads can whirl on matters Irish, given their conflicting factions and historical passions...
...Meanwhile, it addresses problems we probably never consider, such as: Why is it that as much as $100 billion a year in would-be tax revenues is not collected...
...It traces the history of our Government's financing in fat and lean times and offers an eminently clear overview of economic thought from Adam Smith through Keynesian to supply-side economics...
...Few topics are as spiritually exhilarating and stupefying as the history of the church...
...Throughout, he manages to highlight the odd (for an outsider) confluence of spirituality, martial achievement, rank corruption, Christ-like sacrifice and reform, political hanky-panky--all together in glorious contradiction and still going strong...
...his exile as a Jew in Zurich during World War II...
...His new book is called Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt (Walker, $21,214 pp...
...Duffy, a fellow in history at Magdalen College, Cambridge, is the author of an outstanding history of the English Reformation, titled The Stripping of the Altars (Yale, 1992...
...The first is a truly magnificent book, composed by our Catholic national treasure, Raymond E. Brown, S.S...
...And for quick page-turning, because it's a page turner...
...What happened to those notorious pig farms in Secaucus...
...Where are the glorious columns of the majestic Penn Station...
...To find out, read Gordon, an informative, easy-to-read tale...
...For lovers of biography, here is a terrific one...
...ince these are suggestions for summer, allow me to begin by recommending a group of small books, the sort that can be held between one thumb and four fingers...
...Come back here...
...Martin's, $26.25, 371 pp...
...We readers canoe, yes, canoe along with him, and his discoveries are endlessly fascinating...
...Solti, on our shores, was most noted as the zestful conductor of the extraordinary (under his guidance) Chicago Symphony Orchestra, from 1969-91...
...Its title (along with an arresting cover photo) captures the book's spirit: Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Irish Freedom (St...
...Yet, one can tentatively assert that his latest, An Introduction to the New Testament (Doubleday, $42.50, 878 pp...
...Brown has published so many outstanding biblical studies that one hesitates to call his latest his crowning achievement...
...Commonweal 2 6 June 19,1998...
...A gripping story, a gripping book...
...The author is John Steele Gordon, a regular columnist for American Heritage and author of the wonderful The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street (on the Erie Railroad Wars), a man who writes popular, lucid histories for noneconomists like you and me...
...A truly wonderful book...
...Next comes the mammoth (and handsome) The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, edited by Michael Glazier and Thomas Shelley (Glazier/ Liturgical Press, $79.95,1,567 pp...
...It's not how it sounds...
...Not only does the reader's admiration for the genius of Alexander Hamilton grow abounds (he was the only one of our noted Founding Fathers who had a clue about economics) but, equally so, the reader begins to appreciate keenly the relationship between our wars, depressions, trade and their financing...
...it can be held in one hand but, on occasion, one might need the other for balance...
...The first is a delightful, witty but sobering book by Robert Sullivan, titled The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of the City (Scribner, $23, 220 pp...
...Devoy's life (1842-1928) was a long one, and it not only paralleled in time but often inspired in action much of Ireland's sad to triumphant history in eighty-plus years...
...A second is the equally delightful Memories by Sir George Solti (Knopf, $25.95,258 pp...
...This is one of those texts that is as tempting as a dish of peanuts...
...but in addition, there are fascinating articles on what one would think would be subjects too difficult to capsulate intelligently: separate pieces on various Catholic "ethnics" (the Irish, Poles, Italians, Germans, et al...
...We follow his life from his boyhood in Budapest, where as a young pianist he reveres his teacher Bela Bartok...
...Most Jerseyites and New Yorkers prefer to ignore it (now that its formidable mosquitoes have been tamed) or to bypass it in silence via the N.J...
...All three are perfect for the summer days when one is driven indoors by rain or heat or voracious mosquitoes...
Vol. 125 • June 1998 • No. 12
