A page-turner for fans of John Paul II, devotees of papal history, or those who simply enjoy a good and literate personal...
The story behind the defining biography of John Paul II (1920-2005).
Vatican expert Weigel (Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church, 2013, etc.) tells the tale behind the writing of his most influential book. In 1999, the author published Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. Though not technically an authorized biography, Weigel received the written permission of the pontiff to write the book as well as the assistance of the Curia in researching it. The book changed Weigel’s life, but only partly through its publication. The process of researching and writing it was also life-changing, and that is the story the author conveys here. He takes readers back in time to the closing years of the Cold War, chronicling how he rose up the ranks of Catholic scholars and writers as the Catholic Church pivoted, with difficulty, toward a new worldview in terms of communism and its own future. As his story passes into the 1990s, the author describes a pope of immense moral stature who was often at odds with the church bureaucracy that often fought, or ignored, John Paul’s agenda in a changing world, as well as many of the problems besetting the church as the 20th century closed. Weigel interviewed these bureaucrats, among many others, to piece together the story of John Paul’s papacy. In the end, the author completed his acclaimed biography and received his greatest remuneration: the gratitude of the pope himself. Weigel brings out an astounding collection of names, and the work could easily sound like a continued exercise in name-dropping were it not for his skill as a storyteller. Though the language is occasionally overly forma, the author’s standing as a thinker and writer keeps his work from seeming arrogant.
A page-turner for fans of John Paul II, devotees of papal history, or those who simply enjoy a good and literate personal story.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-09429-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered...
The inspirational and ultimately redemptive story of a teenage girl’s descent into hell, framed as a parable of faith.
The disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002 made national headlines, turning an entire country into a search party; it seemed like something of a miracle when she reappeared, rescued almost by happenstance, nine months later. As the author suggests, it was something of a mystery that her ordeal lasted that long, since there were many times when she was close to being discovered. Her captors, a self-proclaimed religious prophet whose sacraments included alcohol, pornography and promiscuous sex, and his wife and accomplice, jealous of this “second wife” he had taken, weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. In fact, his master plan was for similar kidnappings to give him seven wives in all, though Elizabeth’s abduction was the only successful one. She didn’t write her account for another nine years, at which point she had a more mature perspective on the ordeal, and with what one suspects was considerable assistance from co-author Stewart, who helps frame her story and fill in some gaps. Though the account thankfully spares readers the graphic details, Smart tells of the abuse and degradation she suffered, of the fear for her family’s safety that kept her from escaping and of the faith that fueled her determination to survive. “Anyone who suggests that I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome by developing any feelings of sympathy for my captors simply has no idea what was going on inside my head,” she writes. “I never once—not for a single moment—developed a shred of affection or empathy for either of them….The only thing there ever was was fear.”
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered rather than how she recovered.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-04015-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
A captivating, redemptive chronicle of a year in which Smith looked intently into the abyss.
This chronicle of a chaotic year filled with deep losses and rich epiphanies finds the writer and performer covering a whole lot of ground.
In terms of the calendar, Smith’s latest memoir has a tighter focus than its predecessors, M Train (2015) and Just Kids (2010), which won the National Book Award. The titular year is 2016, a year that would begin just after the author turned 69 and end with her turning 70. That year, Smith endured the death of her beloved friend Sandy Pearlman, the music producer and manager with whom she would “have coffee at Caffé Trieste, peruse the shelves of City Lights Bookstore and drive back and forth across the Golden Gate listening to the Doors and Wagner and the Grateful Dead”; and the decline of her lifelong friend and kindred spirit Sam Shepard. She held vigil for Pearlman at his hospital deathbed, and she helped Shepard revise his final manuscript, taking dictation when he could no longer type. Throughout, the author ponders time and mortality—no surprise considering her milestone birthday and the experience of losing friends who have meant so much to her. She stresses the importance of memory and the timeless nature of a person’s spirit (her late husband remains very much alive in these pages as well). Seeing her own reflection, she thinks, “I noticed I looked young and old simultaneously.” She refers to herself as the “poet detective,” and this particular year set her on a quixotic quest, with a mysterious companion unexpectedly reappearing amid a backdrop of rock touring, lecture touring, vagabond traveling, and a poisonous political landscape. “I was still moving within an atmosphere of artificial brightness with corrosive edges,” she writes, “the hyperreality of a polarizing pre-election mudslide, an avalanche of toxicity infiltrating every outpost.”
A captivating, redemptive chronicle of a year in which Smith looked intently into the abyss.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-65768-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
