J. W. Mohnhaupt’s first book, The Zookeepers’ War, is an earnest plunge into the extraordinary history behind Berlin’s competing zoos during the Cold War.

There is still much that remains unknown about the enslaved people owned, rented and borrowed by the Catholic Church.

In her fourth book, The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions Into Devotion, Sonja Livingston introduces herself as a “pilgrimess” returning to her childhood church in Rochester, N.Y., after not regularly attending Mass for 20 years.

In the fifth episode of "Plague," Mike visits the small Midwestern city of Belleville, Illinois, where a Catholic Sister broke ground in the 1980s by opening an organization to provide services for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Learn more at www.americamag.org/plague.

The Psalms lengthen the moment, enlarge the experience and connect a private experience to those of other human beings. Wonder fades if we do not “back it up.”