At the closing of the interreligious World Day of Peace in Assisi in 1986 Pope John Paul II articulated the essence and value of the day rsquo s fasting and prayer ldquo Let us see in it an anticipation of what God would like the developing history of humanity to be a fraternal journey in which

The first question that comes to my mind while reading de Bellaigue rsquo s blunt reportage from the Islamic Republic is What about Kahra Kazemi the photo-journalist who was brutally beaten and possibly raped by the Iranian secret police before dying of her injuries on July 10 2003 She held a

What paradise and what ashes are meant by the title Paradise in Ashes A Guatemalan Journey of Courage Terror and Hope The paradise refers to the small village of Santa Mar a Tzej In the late 1960 rsquo s it was virtually carved out of the rain forest in northern Guatemala by a group of poor

J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist whose brilliant blue eyes came to express such engulfing sadness, brought a new kind of fire into the world and was burned by it. Like Hesiod's Prometheus, Oppenheimer fought on the side of humankind, giving us the tools and weapons to determine our own fate; and fate punished him for it.

Cardinal Walter Kasper prefect of the Vatican rsquo s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was well established as a theologian long before being made a bishop For many years he was on the faculty of the University of T bingen where his colleagues included Hans K ng His present bo

The newest book from Stephen Koch the celebrated author of Double Lives Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War Against the West and The Modern Library Writer rsquo s Workshop is a riveting mix of biography and history As biographer Koch writes of Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos their