Through a series of penetrating conversations originally published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard talk with a wide range of cutting edge thinkers--including Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, and Elaine Scarry--to explore the problem of violence in everyday life, politics, culture, media, language, memory, and the environment. "To bring out the best of us," writes Evans, "we have to c...

The Catholic Church invented what we know as the “university,” including the cultural tradition of free and open debate on disputed questions. Catholic colleges and universities thus stand poised to help reform institutions of higher learning at a moment of crisis in academic life throughout the western world.In his commencement addresses to colleges and universities large and small, George Weigel challenges graduates to understand an academic degree as a summons to become the trus...

Cardinal George Pell was a significant figure in Australian public life and in the life of the Catholic Church from the time of his appointment to the episcopacy in the 1980s until his death in 2023. His imprisonment for some 404 days for a crime he did not commit was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Australian legal history. His scape-goat treatment has been compared to that of Alfred Dreyfus in the period of the Third French Republic.As a defender of Catholic orthod...

This definitive biography of Pope John Paul II explores his historic influence on the world stage: "Magnificent. A tremendous achievement" ( Washington Post).As head of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, John Paul II was one of the world's most transformational figures. With unprecedented cooperation from the Pope, as well as the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of hi...

The world is full of interesting people, and it has been George Weigel's good fortune to have known many such personalities in a variety of fields: politics, religion, the arts and sciences, journalism, the academy, entertainment, and sports. In this collection of reminiscences and elegies, the best-selling author of the definitive biography of Pope Saint John Paul II remembers these men and women from inside the convictions that formed them.Whether he is sketching the lives of Nob...

A theologian advocates for the Catholic Church through this exploration of its teachings and controversies."An important book and a spectacular public service. It opens a window onto the Catholic faith and will open the minds of believers and skeptics alike." —Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy NoonanThe Catholic Church may be the most controversial institution in the world. Some find its teachings inexplicable, puzzling, even cruel. In this incis...

"A brilliant and important book" from the New York Times bestselling biographer of Pope John Paul II chronicles the rise of Pope Benedict XVI ( Philadelphia Inquirer ).Beginning with the story of John Paul's final months, God's Choice offers a remarkable inside account of the conclave that elevated Benedict XVI as head of a church faced with opportunit...

From a preeminent authority on the Catholic Church and papal biographer, "an intimate understanding of John Paul II" (Weekly Standard)In Lessons in Hope, George Weigel tells the story of his unique friendship with St. John Paul II. As Weigel learns the pope "from inside," he also offers a firsthand account of the tumult of post-Vatican II Catholicism and the Cold War's endgame, introducing readers to the heroes who brought down European communism....

As religiously grounded moral arguments have become ever more influential factors in the national debate-particularly reinforced by recent presidential elections and the creation of the faith-based initiative office in the White House-journalists' ignorance about theological convictions has often worked to distort the public discourse on important policy issues. Pope John Paul II's pronouncements on stem-cell research, the constitutional controversies regarding faith-based initiatives, the...

“As March gave way to April in the spring of 2005 and the world kept vigil outside the apostolic palace in Rome, the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, then drawing to a poignant end, was already being described as one of the most consequential in two millennia of Christian history.”With these words, world-renowned author and NBC Vatican analyst George Weigel begins his long-awaited sequel to the international bestseller Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul ...

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism's dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America's leading intellectualsThroughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Chu...

“Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, was a man whose life was the expression of a richly textured and multidimensional soul. The many layers of that soul took on their first, mature form in Kraków.” – George WeigelIn this beautifully illustrated spiritual travelogue, New York Times bestselling author George Weigel leads readers through the historic streets of Kraków, Poland, introducing one of the world’s great cities through the life of one of the most infl...