The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis by Alan Jacobs (Oxford University Press, £20.00) Frank
 Litton   “Every age has its own outlook. It is generally good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.” We, therefore, need books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our…

Cad Fúinne, Mar Sin?/ 
What of us, then?  by Colm Ó Tórna (Foilsithe ag Teangscéal/ Áisínteacht Dáilúcháin Leabhar, €10.00/€13.50 post paid; from An Siopa Leabhar, 6 Sráid Fhearchair, Dublin 2; email: siopa@cnag.ie) At the outset the author provides a depressing, albeit accurate, description of the prevailing culture.  He states that its true nature was revealed in…

Mainly About Books by the books editor   St Patrick is seen by many as the Apostle of Ireland – “the man who brought Christianity to or ancestors”. But one has to wonder: the process seems to have been so smooth, so easy, so without conflict, one has to ask was this the beginning of…

So Everyone Can Hear: Communicating Church in a Digital Culture by Mark Crosby (SPCK, £9.99) These days the Sunday homilies, with the occasional pastoral letter from an archbishop or bishop, are not quite enough. With the clamour for attention online the need for all the churches to make their message heard in the din of current…

Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light, an exhibition Beit Wing (Rooms 6-10), National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square Dublin 2 Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light by Gabriele Finaldi and others, published to accompany the exhibition (National Gallery Company London /distributed by Yale University Press, £30.00/€35.00)   This exhibition is the first ever mounted in Ireland, so…

Are we Bodies or Souls? by Richard Swinburne (Oxford University Press, £14.99) Christopher Moriarty   The author, Emeritus Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford, has an impressive number of previous titles. Like this one, some end with question marks and include Is There a God? and Was Jesus God?…

Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the modern age by Remi Brague (University of Notre Dame Press, $29.00 / £35.50) Frank Litton   Critical thinking is important, we all agree. Of course, the appetite for it is never going to be strong. Most of us want instruction in what the fashionable are thinking. We are as…

Battles that Changed History: Epic conflicts explored and explained by Phillip Parker, R.G. Grant & Andrew Humphreys, foreword by Sir Tony Robinson (Dorling Kindersley, £20.00) There is something deep in the male psyche that loves wars and tales of wars. Women with their very different view of the world are generally unmoved by tales of war,…

Mainly About Books by the books editor   At this time of year a long queue snakes around the square in front of Trinity College’s Old Library, those in it waiting patiently to gain access to see the Book of Kells. Other ancient manuscripts are preserved in Ireland, some of which can be visited online.…

Bursting Out in Praise: Spirituality & Mental Health by Gavin Thomas Murphy (Messenger Publications, €4.95 / £4.50) The author has bipolar disorder, but he has put his own experience of this, and his own solutions to it in his own life, at the heart of this brochure, which many families may value for its non-technical language…