The new book by the historians Mike Davis and Jon Wiener takes readers on a picaresque voyage around Los Angeles during the “long sixties” (1960-1973).

The short story “San Manuel Bueno, Martir” by the Spanish existentialist Miguel de Unamuno can help us to sort out the feelings of the unbelieving minister.

From features on contemporary writers to looks back at some of our greatest literary figures, along with poetry, biography, social criticism and more, our Spring Books 2020 issue has something for everyone (well, almost everyone).

He is most well known for inventing the light bulb and the phonograph, but Thomas Edison patented 1,093 "machines, systems, processes, and phenomena.” In 1881, Edmund Morris writes, Edison was “executing, on average, one new patent every four days.”

We have found at the Catholic Book Club that different genres and authors inspire different readers and broad variations in discussion, another reason to mix it up a bit in terms of genres and styles. Our two most recent selections have been no exception.

Barry Lopez's new book describes his experiences at six remote sites around the globe: a rugged cape on the Oregon coast; centuries-old human settlements in the Canadian high Arctic; the complex biome of the Galápagos Islands; early-hominid fossil grounds in northern Kenya; a British imperial penal colony in southeastern Australia; and fields of meteorites on the vast ice of Antarctica.