Patrick Collins gives a close read of Thomas Merton’s correspondence in “A Focus on Truth: Thomas Merton's Uncensored Mind.”

In “The Deep Places,” Ross Douthat relates how an experience of illness and suffering can lead to a search for answers to more transcendent questions, including the meaning of suffering and the gift of perseverance.

The news that Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, had been removed from school curricula was a reminder of one of our nation’s favorite pastimes: book bans.

Walker Percy: "Writing is a craft like any other. Writers and carpenters had better have respect for the workaday tools of the trade, the feel of the wood under the thumb."

Jim Forest, who died on Jan. 13, was a lifelong peace activist and the author of numerous books, including biographies of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

In "For God and My Country: Catholic Leadership in Modern Uganda," J. J. Carney profiles a strategy for being both Catholic and catholic—both uniquely ourselves and totally for the world.