Students of the papacy will find this an invaluable reference, as will trendwatchers and other scholars of the future.
The time, it would seem, is drawing near for Vatican watchers to study the sky for a plume of white smoke. Here’s a timely reference for those handicapping the race for the next pope—and contemplating the future of Catholicism.
Pham (James Madison Univ.), a former Vatican diplomat, knows the ground of his inquiry well. He thoughtfully considers the history of papal succession, never an easy matter to begin with and at times the cause of schism within the church; he looks into the various ways popes have come to their earthly ends (martyrdom, misadventure, assassination, old age); and he even offers a few morsels for the conspiratorially inclined (the surprising number of high-ranking deaths surrounding the passing of Pius XII; a little-publicized al Qaeda attempt on John Paul II’s life a decade ago). Dense with tables, biographical sketches, and other scholarly apparatus taking up half the book, Pham’s study may well be the last word—for now—on the arcane and controversial ways popes have been selected in the past: “. . . political considerations do play a part, albeit not necessarily the predominant part,” he asserts, adding that the larger the electoral body of cardinals, the greater the chance for swings and surprises. Of broader interest, however, is his reckoning of the challenges the next pope will face, especially since talk of such conditional matters is very nearly taboo in Vatican circles. For one thing, he remarks, the church of the near future will draw most of its membership from the Third World, due to declining religiosity among European and North American Catholics; for another, the next pope will have to deal with the potential for growing conflict between Christianity and Islam; and questions of theological pluralism, divorce and remarriage, priestly celibacy, contraception, and the role of women in the church will grow ever more pressing.
Students of the papacy will find this an invaluable reference, as will trendwatchers and other scholars of the future.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-19-517834-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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