The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart

Author - Brian Doyle

http://www.bookschristian.com

One of the most miraculous machines ever created, without a doubt, is the human heart. It is engineered to move blood through intricate pathways in our bodies, enabling us to live each day. The heart is the object of poems and love songs as well as science and research. It is also the topic of Brian Doyle’s moving and interesting book called The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart. In this relatively small book, Mr. Doyle studies the emotional, spiritual and scientific workings of the human heart. He bases much of his writing on the harrowing experience of his infant son’s heart surgery.

The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions

Author - Sister Helen Prejean

http://www.amazon.com

More information on Sister Helen Prejean

In The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, well-known author and speaker, Sister Helen Prejean, challenges the reader to question the morality of capital punishment and to ask who is accountable if the wrong person is killed? Best known for her book, Dead Man Walking (which was turned into a movie starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon), Sister Helen is a prolific writer who, for more than 10 years, has been a tireless champion for the demise of the death penalty. No matter what your personal feelings are about capital punishment, Sister Helen presents some data and information that is hard to ignore.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Author - Joan Didion

http://www.amazon.com

Author Joan Didion begins her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, this way:
"Life changes fast
Life changes in an instant
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
As she is mixing the salad for dinner one cold winter night, Ms. Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, has a massive heart attack and collapses on the dining room floor. Several hours later he is declared dead. In addition to absorbing the reality of her husband’s sudden death, Ms. Didion is also dealing with her daughter, Quintana, being on life support due to a mysterious illness. If you have ever lost a loved one suddenly or grieved the death of someone close, you will be easily absorbed into Ms. Didion’s “year of magical thinking.” She explores the thoughts and feelings of grief (both rational and irrational) one undergoes in that first year after a death. For example, at one point in the book she is hesitant to get rid of her husband’s shoes because “he will need them when he gets back.” Ms. Didion’s book is powerful and moving, confronting our powerlessness over death and our will survive in spite of tragedy. While losing a spouse is not a unique occurrence, Ms. Didion explores death and grief in an honest way, displaying both courage and vulnerability.

Mountains Beyond Mountains - The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World

Author - Tracy Kidder

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375506161

This is the story of Paul Farmer, renowned infectious-disease specialist, doctor, Harvard professor, whose life work is to bring the tools of modern medicine to those who need them the most. The book was inspirational and thought-provoking. Two excerpts follow:

How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: “Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe,” in literal translation, “God gives but doesn’t share.” This meant, as Farmer would later explain it, “God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.” Liberation theologians had a similar answer: “You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that’s where He is.” Liberation theology, with its emphasis on the horrors of poverty and on redressing them in the here and now, its emphasis on service and remediation, seemed to fit the circumstances of Haiti. (p. 79)

Jim [Kim] said, “And let me just conclude this, my brief remarks here at this TB All-Star Weekend, by paraphrasing someone of our tribe, of Paul’s tribe and my tribe of anthropologists. Margaret Mead once said, “Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.” He paused. “Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.” (p. 164)

The World is Flat

Author - Thomas Friedman

http://www.fsgbooks.com/

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman gives us the tools to begin to make sense of globalization today. He writes about ten forces that flattened the world:

The Bible tells us that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Flattening the world took a little longer. The world has been flattened by the convergence of ten major political events, innovations, and companies. None of us has rested since, or maybe ever will again. This chapter is about the forces that flattened the world and the multiple new forms and tools for collaboration that this flattening has created. (p. 48)

Among the ten flatteners, Friedman cites the fall of the Berlin Wall, Netscape’s going public, outsourcing and Y2K, and “In-Forming” with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Web Search. Friedman poses the question of whether the world has gotten too small and too fast for humans and political systems to adjust in a stable manner.

Questions About Angels

Author - Billy Collins

http://www.pitt.edu/~press/books/questionsaboutangels.html

The following excerpt is an example of why I like Billy Collins, America’s Poet Laureate for 2001-2003.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

While this excerpt is from a poem that is not in the collection, I find that reading his poetry is a good way to get some needed perspective.

In the Vineyard of the Lord

Author - Marco Bardazzi

http://www.catholiccompany.com/product_detail.cfm?ID=6654

This is a wonderful biography of our new pope, Benedict XVI. This short biography concludes with a collection of excerpts from public statements he made while a Cardinal.
One extraordinary excerpt is the following from a statement he made on the Contemplation of Beauty:

Is there anyone who does not know Dostoyevsky’s often quoted sentence: “The Beautiful will save us?” However, people usually forget that Dostoyevsky is referring here to the redeeming Beauty of Christ. We must learn to see Him. If we know Him, not only in words, but if we are struck by the arrow of his paradoxical beauty, then we will truly know him, and know him not only because we have heard others speak about him. Then we will have found the beauty of Truth, of the Truth that redeems. Nothing can bring us into close contact with the beauty of Christ himself other than the world of beauty created by faith and light that shines out from the faces of the saints, through whom his own light becomes visible.