In his 90th year, the indefatigable historian John Hope Franklin has written his life story. More than any other scholar, Franklin has made African-American history an essential part of American history.

Joan Didion has been writing books for more than 40 years. Her newest and most unforgettable book is "The Year of Magical Thinking."

We might think the battle for Christmas is over words. But the struggle is waged at a far deeper level of our lives.

The other day I asked a friend of mine, an old-timer and a longtime baseball fan, if he remembered the 1955 World Series. He thought a moment, and said: "Oh, yeah, wasn't that a Dodger-Yankee series?" Yes, it was. But 1955 was special.

From the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, until the end of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Jews around the world engage in an intense annual period of repentance.

Teilhard was striving for sanctity by working in science, and this effort would require a new understanding of what it means to be holy.

Upon John Gregory Dunne's death of a heart attack in December 2003 the many obituaries and eulogies for this famous man of letters stressed the deft touch Dunne brought as a writer to those subjects he knew well.

For many people today, globalization is happening at the dinner table. My wife and I, both of Irish-American descent, stare across the table every day at two exquisitely Chinese faces. As toddlers, both our daughters traveled halfway around the world to be at home with us, their hope-filled parents,

Something you don’t hear every day from a Jesuit: I’m here to pick up a cassock for my trip to Lourdes.

“Students who understood very little of his lectures told me that they attended because they ‘felt better’ about themselves in his presence. ‘This is a professor to whom I can confess,’ one said.”