How To Know A Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks, Random House, New York, 2023.

A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person and fostering deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain. As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”

The Third Temple: A Novel  by Yishai Sarid, Restless Books, Amhersy MA, [translation] 2024. 

Reading various books and perspectives in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gaza, and genocide, this  novel, "in a near-future Jerusalem," offers a dark response to Who will rule the Holy Land, and at what cost? 

Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2017. 

Take a romp through children’s literature; Dr Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak, C.S. Lewis, The Cat in the Hat, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Charlotte’s Web, The Little House on the Prairie and much more.  Learn about the authors, the themes and what you as an adult can garner. A delightful book.

The Jesuit Disruptor by Michael Higgins, House of Anansi Press, Inc, 2024.

A fresh look at a complex pope with a simple agenda: radically reforming the Catholic Church. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the consummate disruptor, disrupting archaic modes of church governance, disrupting our collective spiritual complacency in the face of new challenges to our human flourishing while at the same time remaining deeply faithful to the organic traditions of the church. He is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but beyond that he is a universal leader with commanding moral presence, able to connect with laypeople and with non-Christian faiths.

Composing Sacred Scripture: How the Bible was Formed by Donald Senior, CP, Liturgical Training Publications, Chicago, Il, 2016. 

Easily readable, brief, and comprehensive; by one of the finest of our Catholic biblical scholars. The best book I’ve come across on understanding the history behind the Sacred Scriptures and how the various books of the Bible and Gospels were composed and chosen. Should be in every home alongside the Bible.