Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost my Faith and Found it Again Through Science by Mike McHargue (Hodder & Stoughton, £9.99) Christopher Moriarty An intense reading of the entire Bible, following a deeply traumatic incident in his life, led the Southern Baptist author Mike McHargue to a spell of atheism which lasted for two years.…
Wounds: A Memoir of Love & War by Fergal Keane (William Collins, £18.99) Fergal Keane is well-known as a foreign correspondent, especially for his coverage of Africa and Serbia. His main area of interest is war and its effect on those who have been caught up in it. In his latest book he looks closer to…
Catholic debate has revolved around a literal life-and-death issue since Pope Francis’ declaration last week that the death penalty is “contrary to the Gospel” and should be abolished. As usual, it’s always better to read the Pope’s own words in full – for example at en.radiovaticana.va – than to get embroiled in others’ comments, but…
Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life by Henri J. M. Nouwen, edited by Gabrielle Earnshaw, foreword by Brené Browne (Hodder & Stoughton, £10.99) Anthony Redmond Fr Henri Nouwen was one of the most prolific and important spiritual writers of the 20th Century. Since his unexpected death in 1996 his fame and influence as a spiritual writer…
Padre Pio: Irish Encounters with the Saint by Colm Keane (Capel Island Press, €14.99) Author Colm Keane will be familiar to many from his earlier books exploring aspects of life, death, and spirituality. They have proved to be both very popular and, in the eyes of some, controversial. In his new book he explores the life…
The World of Books Si Newhouse died the other day, and as the American millionaire owner of some high-profile titles such as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, he was something of a celebrity, a celebrity however with a dubious reputation. The name of André Schiffrin [pictured] may not be so familiar to many,…
The Quiet Architect (PG) I don’t tend to get very worked up about buildings. I’ve always seen them as things you go into when you want to get in out of the rain. This fascinating documentary from Mark Noonan made me re-think that. Kevin Roche is Irish but he’s spent most of his life ‘stateside’. He designed over…
Atlas of the Irish Revolution edited by John Crowley, Donal Ó Drisceoil, and Mike Murphy, with associate editor John Borgonovo (Cork University Press, €59.00) Felix M. Larkin The many plaudits this volume has received since its publication in mid-September are well justified. It is an epic production, running to almost 1,000 pages and weighing in at five kilos.…
Humour is a very subjective thing, and with something I think is funny, others may remain untickled. That being said I find W1A (BBC 2, Friday nights) hilarious. But then it is a send up of the media so I’m in my zone and with my tribe. The target of the satire is political correctness,…
Return to Montauk (PG ) Max (Stellan Skarsgard) is a writer from Berlin. He’s doing a promotional book tour in New York. Seventeen years ago he had a brief romance with Rebecca (Nina Hoss). Neither of them realised how much they cared about each other at the time. He meets her again now. You don’t have to be Einstein…
Greg Daly
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan