Fr. Sertillanges's teachings are as timeless as any truths which describe the genuine nature of things. . . . This book is highly recommended not only for intellectuals, but also for students and those discerning their vocation in life.--New Oxford Review

This] is above all a practical book. It discusses with a wealth of illustration and insight such subjects as the organization of the intellectual worker's time, materials, and his life; the integration of knowledge and the relation of one's specialty to general knowledge; the choice and use of reading; the discipline of memory; the taking of notes, their classification and use; and the preparation and organization of the final production.--The Sign

I send you this little book written down in my name, that you may read it for your education, as a kind of mirror.

So wrote the Frankish noblewoman Dhuoda to her young son William in the middle of the ninth century. Intended as a guide to right conduct, the book was to be shared in time with William's younger brother. Dhuoda's situation was poignant. Her husband, Bernard, the count of Septimania, was away and she was separated from her children. William was by Charles the Bald as a guarantee of his father's loyalty, and the younger son's whereabouts were unknown. As war raged in the crumbling Carolingian Empire, the grieving mother, fearing for the spiritual and physical welfare of her absent sons, began in 841 to write her loving counsel in a handbook. Two years later she sent it to William.

Handbook for William memorably expresses Dhuoda's maternal feelings, religious fervor, and learning. In teaching her children how they might flourish in God's eyes, as well as humanity's, Dhuoda reveals the authority of Carolingian women in aristocratic households. She dwells on family relations, social order, the connection between religious and military responsibility, and, always, the central place of Christian devotion in a noble life.

One of the few surviving texts written by a woman in the Middle Ages, Dhuoda's Liber manualis was available in only two faulty Latin manuscripts until a third, superior one was discovered in the 1950s. This English translation is based on the 1975 critical edition and French translation by Pierre Rich . Now available for the first time in paperback, it includes an afterword written by Carol Neel that takes into account recent scholarship and the 1991 revised edition of Rich 's text.

The Young Adult Playbook goes where other life design books refuse to go: it asks deep questions about what constitutes a happy life. After decades of listening to their students, Anna Moreland and Thomas Smith name the underlying desires in young adults: while searching for a lucrative career, they long for meaningful work; their social media and gaming practices point to a deeper yearning for intimacy; and their leisure habits have been crushed under the productivity machine. This book helps them unlock their deepest desires. It offers practical strategies to improve habits. And it leads them to recover activities lost from childhood. The book is threaded with the real voices of young adults who have found their way out of this rough terrain. These offer much needed models of hope, providing a concrete map through unprecedented challenges. Journal exercises throughout the chapters tailor the strategies for each individual reader.

Plenty of books diagnose the ills of this digital age. Few offer a pathway out of these challenges. As caring and effective college professors, Moreland and Smith have spent decades rescuing students from this impoverished landscape. In this book they attempt to reach the students they can't teach.

Originally published in English in 1988, Joseph Ratzinger's Eschatology remains internationally recognized as a leading text on the last things-heaven and hell, purgatory and judgment, death and the immortality of the soul. This highly anticipated second edition includes a new preface by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI and a supplement to the bibliography by theologian Peter A. Casarella. Eschatology presents a balanced perspective of the doctrine at the center of Christian belief-the Church's faith in eternal life. Recognizing the task of contemporary eschatology as to marry perspectives, so that person and community, present and future, are seen in their unity, Joseph Ratzinger brings together recent emphasis on the theology of hope for the future with the more traditional elements of the doctrine. His book has proven to be as timeless as it is timely.

Book sales of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien keep pace with those of the Koran and the Bible. TV companies pay hundreds of millions to the Tolkien Trust to make adaptations of his work. In the UK, he routinely tops the list of the nation's favorite authors. An estimated 2 million war gamers use The Lord of the Rings figurines in their RPG. It is incontestable that Tolkien is the most influential Catholic writer of the last century. Tolkien, Philosopher of War fills a gap in the scholarship. It is the first book addressing the philosophical and theological understanding of war in Tolkien and will interest readers of Catholic Studies, the philosophy and theology of literature, war studies, Tolkien Studies, English studies, political theory, and aesthetics.

In popular imagination, Tolkien is a Luddite, but recent scholarship has identified Tolkien's extensive modern sympathies. Tolkien, Philosopher of War contributes to this growing literature. His is a modern critique of Enlightenment thinking, specifically those philosophies of history that wrest the initiative from God in divinizing man. His worry is apocalyptic politics, those political movements that take Christ's Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5: 48) out of the realm of grace and make it a platform for political action. Tolkien, Philosopher of War has three core theses: metaphysical, political, and aesthetic. In this, Tolkien is comparable to Cormac McCarthy, especially his Blood Meridian.

Tolkien took note of a tight analytical connection between the vanity driving commercial civilization - which Hume, Smith, and Ferguson all identified - and the vanity driving the Promethean fantasies of apocalyptic politics. War - indeed, total war - is a predictable outcome of this analytical connection. The three theses run: 1) metaphysical: the apocalyptic anxiety of Tolkien's lore is traceable to the gnostic rejection of the analogy of being typical of the philosophies of history that dominated his day; 2) political: in the English context, Tolkien sided with the Tories against Whiggery, defending monarchy as a counterweight to the vanity driving progressive philosophy of history; 3) aesthetic: Futurism's philosophy of history celebrated the Machine; inverting the value order, the Futurism art movement encoded anti-Christianity, fascist politics, and apocalyptic war. Tolkien's cosmogonical drama, with its pastoralism and portraits of angels (Gandalf) and gods (Nienna), dramatizes an aesthetic resistance to Futurism.

The chief aim of this primer is to give the student, within one year of study, the ability to read ecclesiastical Latin. Collins includes the Latin of Jerome's Bible, of canon law, of the liturgy and papal bulls, of scholastic philosophers, and of the Ambrosian hymns, providing a survey of texts from the fourth century through the Middle Ages.

An Answer Key to this edition is now available. Please see An Answer Key to A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, prepared by John Dunlap.

The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Irenaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer.

At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, whether historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and whether history confirms the antiquity of Catholic claims.

This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context.

As Fr. White states in the book's introduction: This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.

In the twenty-first century there are two ways to study logic. The more recent approach is symbolic logic. The history of teaching logic since World War II, however, casts doubt on the idea that symbolic logic is best for a first logic course. Logic as a Liberal Art is designed as part of a minority approach, teaching logic in the verbal way, in the student's natural language, the approach invented by Aristotle. On utilitarian grounds alone, this verbal approach is superior for a first course in logic, for the whole range of students.

For millennia, this verbal approach to logic was taught in conjunction with grammar and rhetoric, christened the trivium. The decline in teaching grammar and rhetoric in American secondary schools has led Dr. Rollen Edward Houser to develop this book. The first part treats grammar, rhetoric, and the essential nature of logic. Those teachers who look down upon rhetoric are free, of course, to skip those lessons. The treatment of logic itself follows Aristotle's division of the three acts of the mind (Prior Analytics 1.1). Formal logic is then taken up in Aristotle's order, with Parts on the logic of Terms, Propositions, and Arguments.

The emphasis in Logic as a Liberal Art is on learning logic through doing problems. Consequently, there are more problems in each lesson than would be found, for example, in many textbooks. In addition, a special effort has been made to have easy, medium, and difficult problems in each Problem Set. In this way the problem sets are designed to offer a challenge to all students, from those most in need of a logic course to the very best students.

Born in Waterloo, Ontario, in 1924, to a prominent family, David Bauer attended St. Michael's College-School run by the Basilian Fathers of Toronto. After serving in World War II, Bauer joined the religious community and coached its St. Michael's Majors to a national championship in 1961. Influenced by philosophers like Jacques Maritain, Bauer tried to find solutions to problems created within elite hockey and thus founded Canada's first ever National Team program. This team countered the cutthroat ideals of hockey's powerbrokers and set out to return Canada to international glory. The team represented the nation at several global tournaments and three Winter Olympic Games. Bauer was posthumously inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1989.

Hockey Priest looks past simply understanding Bauer as a do-gooder or hockey innovator. It shows how he attempted to create a different stream of hockey that could better support youth and so build up the nation. Archival research for the book uncovered Bauer-written hockey reports, speeches, and notes that detail his thinking about the game and his politicking to bring about change in it. Interviews with dozens of associates and family members told the story of his bold efforts to take on the National Hockey League. Despite his work being undermined by some supporters of the corporate game, Bauer offered a vision for Canada's sport that remains an important counterpoint in the sport's history and its ongoing challenges.

Vatican II initiated lively conversations about the identity of religious orders and congregations when the council pointed out that these religious communities are divine gifts in and to the church. Keith Egan examines the nature of these charisms including, not only the original or founders' charism, but how charisms evolve over the centuries. Special theological attention to these charisms show that they are not something but, in fact, are the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit. This volume offers a case study the original charism of the Carmelites. The first Carmelites originated when various hermits were displaced by the armies of Saladin. These dislodged hermits sought refuge on Mount Carmel in a ravine facing the Mediterranean Sea. There, these hermits, now Carmelites, sought from Saint Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a description of their life of solitude. Albert's Formula of Life describes the original Carmelite charism as a life of prayer and contemplation. This Formula eventually became a Rule that made possible a transformation of hermits into friars. Egan is at work on a sequel that examines this radical transformation.

Introduction to the Mystery of the Church is an ecclesiological survey presenting a doctrinal synthesis of the Church. The author's intention is to propose an overview of this mystery in connection with the entiretyof the Christian mystery. The book is divided into two major parts, the first presenting the foundations in the Bible and the tradition up to our day, and the second being an explanatory proposal introducing the reader to the Church's definition and personality and concluding with an exposition of the four properties enunciated in the Creed (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic).

This long-awaited volume provides an answer key to the drills and exercises contained in each of the units of John F. Collins's bestselling A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin. Written for those charged with the responsibility of teaching the Latin of the church, the primer aims to give the student-within one year of study-the ability to read ecclesiastical Latin. Thirty-five instructional units provide the grammar and vocabulary, and supplemental readings offer a survey of church Latin from the fourth century to the Middle Ages. Included is the Latin of Jerome's Bible, of canon law, of the liturgy and papal bulls, of scholastic philosophers, and of the Ambrosian hymns.

Few thinkers have shaped Western civilization more powerfully than St. Augustine (354-430). This volume offers a comprehensive portrait--or rather, self-portrait, since its words are mostly Augustine's own--drawn from the breadth of his writings and from the long course of his career. One chapter is devoted to each of his masterpieces (Confessions, On the Trinity, and City of God) and one to each of his best-known controversies (against Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians). It also explores the often overlooked facets of his career, namely, his everyday work as a bishop, preacher, and interpreter of the Bible. Augustine was an extraordinarily prolific writer, and his eloquent long-windedness can prove overwhelming not only to newcomers, but even to experts. Few know what to read first or how best to read him in context, given the complex and dauntingly remote world of Late Antiquity. This collection is designed to help readers not only to sort through his vast corpus of writings but also to tune their ears to the melodies of his speech and the swirl of his mind. What catches our ear today, as it caught the ear of Augustine's first hearers, is the heart beneath the voice, his uncanny ability to speak across the centuries, heart to heart, his heart to ours. His was an agitated eloquence, and he used it to ponder and wrestle aloud with life's mysteries, both those glimpsed in the epic of human history and those astir in the depths of the human heart. But Augustine's center and passion was another far greater mystery, the God he met in the Bible and in his heart. This book is an introduction, intended for first-time readers. It brings together state-of-the-art scholarship, lucid translations, and a judicious selection of readings, including excerpts from newly discovered letters and sermons as well as from hard-to-find translations of his often formidable opponents.