S H E E D 6> WARD FALL WINTER 1942-3 SHEED fir WARD, INC. 63 FIFTH AVE. NEW YORK CRAMERCY 7-7177 CONTENTS Page Brennan: ESSAYS IN THOMISM ($5.00*, October 21) 15 CATHOLIC MASTERPIECE TUTORIAL SERIES 21 Dawson: THE JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS ($2.50, September 23) 3 Farrell: A COMPANION TO THE SUMMA, Vol. 4 ($3.75, October 28) 14 Farren: THIS MAN WAS IRELAND ($2.50, November 11) 17 Farrow: PAGEANT OF THE POPES ($3.50, October 14) 4 Fox: GAY LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS ($1.50, October 21) 22 Hart: MARY OF THE MAGNIFICAT ($1.00, October 14) 22 Holsapple: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT ($3.00, November 11).... 6 Hurrell: THE CHURCH’S PLAY ($1.50, October 21) 23 Mariella: GREAT MODERN STORIES ($3.00, October 21) 10 McNabb: OLD PRINCIPLES AND THE NEW ORDER ($2.75, November 25) 8 Patch: CUPID ON THE STAIRS ($2.50, October 28).... 11 Savage: DOGSLED APOSTLES ($2.75, October 28) 18 Sheed: CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE ($3.00, October 28).. 5 Sheed: POETRY AND LIFE ($2.50, October 28) 16 SHEED & WARD BOOK SOCIETY 24 Simon: THE ROAD TO VICHY ($2.25, September 9) 13 THE THOMIST 20 Timasheff : RELIGION IN SOVIET RUSSIA ($2.00, September 30) 12 Ward: NOVA SCOTIA ($2.50, October 14) .;. 9 Wells: MEDIEVAL AND TUDOR PLAYS ($3.50, October 14) 7 Williams: SECOND SOWING ($3.50, October 14) 19 Windeatt: LAD OF LIMA ($1.50, October 21) 23 *Short Discount Prices and dates subject to change [ 2 ] Christopher Dawson THE JUDGMEIST OF THE NATIONS As a Christian philosopher of history, Christopher Dawson stands alone in the modern world. His weight of learning is equalled only by his profound insight. He carries this learning more lightly today than when he began to write, and he is proportionately easier to read. His new book most nearly resembles Religion and the Modern Suite, but it is longer and more important. Most readers probably will be interested in his view of a workable world polity. Some kind of world order obviously must come; but, he urges there must be something intermediate between the single state and the world organization. In other words, states great and small should be organized into loose federations with others of their own cultural type, and the final world structure should be a federa- tion of these federations. Some of these “intermediate” federations are already functioning—the U. S. A., the U. S. S. R., the British Empire—others suggest themselves as possible—Latin America, India, China, Europe west of Russia. Leading up to this, the book treats of three main matters. First, Dawson inquires into the fundamental causes of the present conflict and surveys historically the religious origins of European diversities, discussing especially the clash between the societies produced by Lutheranism and Calvinism. He analyzes also the effect on the individual of the unparalleled advances of science in the last hun- dred years. Daily life was revolutionized while the political and social framework remained unchanged. Second, he discusses the issues arising from the Totalitarian bid for universal power. He inquires searchingly into the survival of democracy and the future of liberty, and discusses the limits and possibilities of a planned social order. Upon the third matter Dawson’s unique power is best seen, for here he enters most fully into the realm of the spiritual. In his eyes “the real social mission of Christians is to be the pioneers in a true move- ment of world revolution”: the only true and lasting New Order must be built on His “Light which enlighteneth every man.” So Dawson writes on a program for Christians and on the unseen principle in history. 22 2 pages $2.50 September 23 A Sheed ^ Ward Book Society Selection [ 3 ] John Farrow^ K, C, H, S. PAGEANT OF THE POPES Illustraled by Jean Chariot John Farrow is a Hollywood film director. In Damien the Leper he had already shown how it was possible to apply the film-man’s technique to an ecclesiastical subject without denaturing it. In Pageant of the Popes he applies the same technique to the popes — all two hundred and sixty of them, all nineteen centuries of them — the good ones, the bad ones, the mediocre ones. He is quite a remarkable combination of film-man and historian, very good film-man, very accurate historian. Hollywood loves masses and movement and color, especially color: and to get them it usually treats the mere facts of history pretty cavalierly. But Farrow is a very good historian, he falsifies nothing: his book has the accuracy of a text-book. Not only that, he avoids the tempta- tion of choosing the most colorful patches, laying on the purple where it will show best and ignoring the rest. He concentrates upon what is really significant in the life and character of each pope, so that his Pageant manages at once to be a blaze of color and a model of proportion. The writing of the book is a minor miracle. He had been reading and making his notes for years; he had just begun the writing when he joined the Canadian Navy where he reached the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. Somehow^ in the endless hours of the Atlan- tic patrol he managed to get so much written that by the time he was invalided out of the navy with typhus, the book was nearly finished. He put the last touches to it while directing Paramount’s film. Wake Island. Jean Chariot has made the same kind of portraits as for Belloc’s Characters of the Reformation. 416 pages, Illustrated $3.50 October 14 A Sheed & Ward Book Society Selection [ 4 ] THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE Translated by F. J. Sheed This translation is of the whole of the Confessions, not only Books I-X, which are Augustine’s spiritual autobiography, but also Books XI-XIII which are a commentary on the first chapter of Genesis and scarcely seem to belong to the story of his conversion at all. But with the profundity of their discussion of the nature of God and of Creation, of Time and Eternity, of Spirit and Matter, they shed vast light upon questions that had troubled him on his way to conversion and may be regarded therefore as a valuable Appendix to his account of that way. In face of a new translation of the Confessions, two questions arise: Why the Confessions? Why a new translation? The first question is easy to answer. St. Augustine is unique for the combination in one man of intense sexual passion and a master- ing passion for intellectual truth. The conflict of these two passions is the subject matter of the story he tells in his Confessions. Outside Scripture it is the most famous of all spiritual books. It is altogether timeless, completely at home in every age, no change of spiritual mood eclipses it. Why a new translation? Precisely because the book is so modern. Most of the existing translations are in an English that is now archaic. The present translation has no claim save that it tries to be in the English people speak now, just as St. Augustine wrote in the Latin people spoke then. It lacks the immense energy of the original because the translator lacks the immense energy of St. Augustine. It is not meant for the use of scholars, who will read the Latin and waste no time on translations: but for those who do not read difficult Latin easily, it will, we hope, give a reasonable idea of what St. Augustine said. 317 pages $3.00 October 28 [ 5 ] Lloyd B. Holsapple CONSTANTINE THE GREAT It is doubtful if Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or even Augustus Caesar exerted a more far-reaching influence on subsequent ages than Constantine did. His adoption of the Christian religion turned the life of the Roman Empire into quite new channels. His removal of the capital of the Empire to the shore of the Bosphorus led to the schism of the Church in the East as well as to situations that survived as causes of World War I, and which are still today destruc- tive of the unity of Europe. His interference in church affairs pro- duced problems and situations destined to disturb the life of the Church for centuries. But the administrative system he devised for the Empire enabled it to survive for more than another thousand years. An understanding of Constantine and of his period is essential for, a grasp of all the later history of Europe. The real significance of this period is spiritual. It has rarely, if ever, been approached from the Catholic point of view. W^hat sort of man was it who achieved such stupendous results? He has been variously called a murdering egoist incapable of re- ligion. and a religious fanatic carried away by superstition. Were his motives mainly religious or were they exclusively political? The divergence of opinion on these points is incredible. For centuries Europe knew little or nothing of the real Constantine, but was entire- ly familiar with a legendary. Actionized Constantine who had never existed. Many educated people today remember the legendary figure, but have forgotten the historic. His times are replete with resem- blances to our own. His predecessor attempted to place a ceiling on prices. His contemporaries used the same methods in their effort to “liquidate” the Christians that have been employed by dictators in our o^m times. A new civilization was being born, as apparently is happening today. This life of Constantine will tell you what the real Constantine did and what sort of a person he was in the eyes of those who actually knew him, and why his figure has become so overlaid with misrepresentation. Probably $3.00 November 11 A Sheed & Ward Book Society Selection [ 6 ] REPRESENTATIVE MEDIEVAL AND TUDOR PLAYS Translated and Edited by Henry fV. Wells and Roger S, Loomis^ both of Columbia University Here is a new anthology doing honor to the medieval stage. About thirty years ago theatrical producers found that this stage possessed a much more elaborate instrument than the “picture” state of Ibsen’s theatre, and that from this source powerful scenic and dramatic effects could be had. More recently playwrights, such as O’Neill, and poets, such as W. H. Auden, discovered further merits in the popular style and racy technique of the old shows. Everyman became a Broadway success, medieval plays were revived in front of the cathedrals of Europe from Salzburg to Paris, and amateurs delighted to stage Christmas pageants and miracle plays arranged from medieval originals. The old dramas became popular reading—at least in college courses. But ready access to them was denied to both actor and reader. They were known as a rule only in rare scholarly editions, or, occasionally, in lame translations. The editors of Representative Medieval and Tudor Plays have done much to remedy this situation. Their translations, with adequate stage directions and an introduc- tory essay, remain faithful to the originals in spirit, and bring the colloquial speech of five hundred years ago into touch with the colloquial language of today. Here we read the happy miracles of Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, the extremely human story of Joseph’s embarrassment, the wonderful tale of the Shepherds who temporarily lost a sheep to a knave before they found their Lord in the manger, and the majestic cycle of the entire Corpus Christi Pageant, here for the first time rendered for modern readers. The Passion Play itself, as known best in the version of Oberammergau, forms but a part of this supreme medieval drama, which recounts human history from Eden to the Last Judgment. To the older plays are added two of the salty farces of Thomas Heywood, who enjoyed the Blessed Thomas More as a patron, and the ever popular Morality, ‘Everrman. 304 pages, Illustrated $3.50 October 14 [ 7 ] Vincent McNabb^ O. P. OLD PRINCIPLES AND THE NEW ORDER Two priests have written two books on sociology both of which are certainly epoch-marking, even if the claim that they are epoch- making be held excessive. Father Vincent McNabb is not a young man and he began to preach his social gospel in the days when Queen Victoria symbolized order, prosperity, advance, the white man and his machines trium- phant, not in England alone but universally. Many admired him in those days as a poet and a spiritual leader who yet only smiled kindly over his sociology. For he begins with men and women and not with machines. And the epoch that he marks is the one that has displaced Victorianism, in which it begins to be seen that sociology would be all the better for some religion and poetry in it, and in which man begins to be seen again as more primary than the machines created by him and yet enslaving him. In this book Father McNabb begins by looking at the Gospel for the foundations of sociology. The Church, he tells us, is not primar- ily concerned with Economics because Economics are not primary, but she is vitally concerned with them because she is concerned with Faith and Morals and true economics must rest on true faith and morals. This is the main principle to serve for basis to a New Order. We are living today in a “Land of Shadows” where tokens (money) are taken as things. But a true economy must be based on realities: the Earth and the men who till it, houses and the men who build them. So he writes of “Land and the Legislators”, “Land and the Cultivators”, “Centralism and the Clergy”—for the Church is the very centre and heart of reality. In the last sections of the book: “Letters” and “Round about the Earth” the poet comes into play, and in a series of w^ord pictures we are shown the real men and women who can make lovely a world restored to reality. Truth is more beautiful than fiction. 272 pages $2.75 November 25 [ 8 ] Leo Richard Ward^ C, S. C. NOVA SCOTIA Land of Co-operatives Map End-Papers by LeRoy Appleton * Father Leo Ward is as much concerned as Father McNabb about the old principles but he gives us little discussion of them. Instead he paints a remarkable picture of the way they work. We know him from God in an Irish Kitchen and Holding Up the Hills as a re- markable artist in words. But in both these books he was drawing on what the past has left to us of fragments of a more human social set-up. In Nova Scotia^ Land of Co-operatives, he is painting no sunset but a dawn. Let no one look in this book for an evaluation of the movement and its leaders, that is not the book’s purpose. And the leaders are not its heroes. It is a field-picture and its heroes are all the little men in action, learning to understand and apply the great principles of Christianity that can only emerge through Co-operation. Co- operation does not mean for them merely stores and savings banks, though these are described. It means learning to work for one another and to live for one another. “The man who is only good for himself is no good” says one little fellow. “This co-operation is kinda on God’s side” says another. And a third, “Is that not the way we are to be in Heaven, all united and not fighting each other?” Co-operation means discovering the Community and taking in common the first steps on the road to economic freedom and personality. Father Ward traversed the Maritimes, talking in kitchens and fisher huts, seeing the spinning, dyeing and weaving of rugs in a family—that first co-operative unit; learning how houses were built, how study clubs were organized and gardens planted by miners who had to learn the skills and catch the spirit. He saw and he shows something small yet unique, small today but big with the hope of a new birth. 232 pages $2.50 October 14 [ 9 ] GREAT MODERN STORIES OF NUNS, MONKS AND PRIESTS By Paul Morgan, Ernest Hemingway, Eliz(tbeth Madox Rob- erts, Sean O’Fflhlain, Agnes Repplier, Scott Fitzger€dd, Frank O^Connor, L, A. G, Strong, Geoffrey Household, Morle^- Callaghan, ami many others. An Anthology compiled by Sister Mariella Gable, O, P, From the Compiler’s Introduction: “For the first lime in the history of the short story we have had in the recent past, monks, nuns, brothers and priests appearing as they are. A surprising number of the best short-story writers of our present decade have written about the cloistered and the consecrated. And curiously enough, their stories about them are among the best things they have written. These short stories, and others of compar- able merit, have been gathered in the present volume as indicating a landmark in the history of literature. There has been nothing quite like the distinguished realism of these descriptions of convents, mon- asteries and the daily routine of parish duties.” As publishers, we believe that the Compiler has done a consider- able service to the general reader of Catholic letters in bringing so many good things together in one volume. She has added a biographical and bibliographical note on each author to complete the usefulness of the volume to the hundreds of Catholic High Schools and Colleges that will use it. The book will appear in time for the new Scholastic Year. We shall be glad to give further information to teachers who may be considering its adoption. 384 pages $3.00 October 21 A Sheed & Ward Book Society Selection [ 10 ] Hotvard Rollin Patch CUPID ON THE STAIRS Crystal Mayhappy is a dutiful wife to one man, an ardent mistress to another, a devoted mother to her son and daughter, a churchgoer, a small-town social leader. But all these are masks, and the face behind every mask is the face of a fool. What a fool! Rich, ripe, satisfying, satisfied! There is exquisite boredom in meeting fools in real life, exquisite joy in meeting fools in novels: remember Elmer Gantry? But if Cupid on the Stairs would be worth reading just for the fun of meeting Crystal Mayhappy, there are others in it worth meeting. They are prose to her poetry, but they are good prose. Her husband and the ageing lady novelist who returns from his far past to set the sap running in him again; the doctor who has learned that Don Juan needs no new tricks; the two very different clergymen; the son and the daughter with their absorbing affairs. For four winds of love, all illicit, are blowing at the one moment through the May- happy household—all illicit, and all unredeemed from absurdity by any element of nobility. Howard Rollin Patch, the author of the story, is a master of ironi- cal detachment. He does not force his characters to do what they do ; he merely lets them do it. And he makes no comment of his own on their actions. But life makes its comment, and he lets life make it. And a pretty powerful comment it is. Being a wit and an ironist, the author produces the strange double effect that his kind of writing so often produces: Gulliver s Travels, for instance, is the most biting satire on the human race ever written, and it is read for sheer entertainment by members of the human race. You may not feel the bite of the satire in Cupid on the Stairs, but you will hardly fail to be entertained. 256 pages $2.50 October 28 [11 ] IS. S, Timasheff RELIGION IN SOVIET RUSSIA 1917-1942 That war has been made upon religion in Russia by Communism, everyone knows. But very few have more than the vaguest idea of the course the war has followed or the present position of the com- batants. Professor Timasheff (a Russian who teaches Sociology at Fordham) gives us a carefully documented history of the main assaults—there have been three of these (in 1922-23, 1929-30, 1937-38)—of the intervening periods of relaxed pressure against religion and of the heroic resistance of Russian Christians. In plain words, the Soviet Government has discovered that human nature is too strong for it—religion cannot be destroyed. What the Russian Government will do in the face of this now unmistakable fact, Professor Timasheff does not pretend to know; but it is at least possible that the Soviet will sensibly try to find some way of living with a power which it has found it cannot kill. But he notes that this is not the only lesson a quarter-century of experience has taught the Communists. In all sorts of ways, human nature has forced almost revolutionary modifications in Communism itself. Here again everything the author says is carefully documented. If it seems to anyone that, as Russia is our ally, we ought to know something of the real nature of our ally, this book is quite vital. Russia has rarely been analyzed for us by a Russian who understands both Religion and Communism. 172 pages $2.00 September 30 [ 12 ] Yves Simon THE ROAD TO VICHY 1918-1938 The tragedy of France is not that she was beaten in war, but that she AN as beaten before the war started. It may be that in the long view of history, present-day France will stand as the classical example of how a Democracy can be destroyed from within. There is nothing like it in all history: but there will be many things like it in the measurable future unless the Democracies study carefully what happened to France. The Nazi minds had studied Democracy—not only its weaknesses but its strengths; and they had developed a technique for using both the Aveaknesses and the strengths of Democracy to destroy Democ- racy: a technique, in fact, for helping a Democracy to destroy itself. Of this technique France was the first victim. But unless we study the case of France carefully, she will not be the last. Y\es Simon was a professor at Lille and is now teaching philos- ophy at Notre Dame. What he has given us is the case history of France; not simply generalizations about the disease of the French soul, but accurate and detailed observations of the working of the disease in the body politic of France, and of the way in which Ger- many, understanding France’s disease better than France did. cooperated with the germs! The horrifying thing is that the new technique for destroying a Democracy is so almost-infallible, that the reader finds himself wondering in a kind of anguish what counter-measures any Democ- racy—our own for example—can possibly take. In that sense, though Yves Simon never suggests danger to America, this is a frightening book. 224 pages $2.25 September 9 A Sheed ^ 'Ward Book Society Selection [ 13 ] Walter Farrell^ O. P. The Way of Life^ Being Volume IV of A COMPAISION TO THE SUMMA With this volume, corresponding to Part III of the Surnma Theo- logica. Father Farrell completes his remarkable venture in com- panionship. Four years ago he conceived his plan of presenting the matter of St. Thomas’s Summa not in its original form of objections and answers hut in straight chapters, written in the modern idiom and illustrated from the life we know. That work is now completed, as follows: Vol. I The Architect of the Universe (Part 1 of S. T. ) Vol. II The Pursuit of Happiness (Part II-l of S. T.) Vol. Ill The Fullness of Life (Part II-ll of S.T.) Vol. IV The Way of Life (Part III of S.T.) It seems certain that this will prove the most widely popular of the four volumes because it contains St. Thomas’s treatment of Our Lord, Our Lady, and the Blessed Eucharist: and in every time and every place these three are at the very heart of Catholic devotion. What makes these sections so vitalizing is that St. Thomas gives us the devotion not as something existent by itself but as the lustre upon the dogmas. Here briefly is the plan of the book: It begins with Christ as the Way—the Mystery of the Incarnation and the life and “personality” of Our Lord; then a wonderful section on Our Lady; then the Sacraments, one by one, as the means by which Christ helps us to walk the Way which is Himself; then the End of the Way—the Judgment, with the goal of Heaven or the Hell of failure. October 28 Each volume is $3.75 The set of four volumes, $15.00 Each volume over 450 pages [ 14 ] ESSAYS US THOMISM Edited by Robert E. Brennan^ O. P. It is right that any movement which has advanced with great speed along a wide and very scattered front should pause from time to time to take stock of its newest positions. It is fifty years since Leo XIII gave Thomism its great new impetus. In that half century the progress has been great; but it has not been continuous. There have been bursts of progress followed by periods with little to show; and these bursts and lulls did not fall evenly in all the countries of the Catholic World. Father Brennan, 0. P., author of General Psychology, has done a necessary thing in getting together a band of Thomists—representing from five to six nationalities—and setting each to expose the present state of problems and prospects in his special field. Here is the list of contents: R. E. Brennan, 0. P. Jacques Maritain Rudolf Allers John K. Ryan Hilary Carpenter, O.P. Vernon J. Bourke John O. Riedl Anton C. Pegis Charles J. O’Neil Mortimer J. Adler John A. Ryan Yves R. Simon Walter Farrell, 0. P. Robert J. Slavin, O. P. Immanuel Chapman Herbert Schwartz Troubadour of Truth Reflections of Necessity and Contingency Intellectual Cognition The Problem of Truth The Ontological Roots of Thomism The Role of Habitus in the Thomistic Meta- physics of Potency and Act The Nature of the Angels The Dilemma of Being and Unity Prudence the Incommunicable Wisdom A Question About Law The Economic Philosophy of Aquinas Beyond, the Crisis of Liberalism The Fate of Representative Government The Thomistic Concept of Education The Perennial Theme of Beauty Epilogue 456 pages $5.00 October 21 [ 15 ] POETRY AND LIFE A new Anthology of English Catholic Poetry Compiled by F. /• Sheed This book is not strictly an anthology. That is a Greek word which means plucking flowers. Our object has not been to find the best poems ever written in English by Catholics and put them between two covers. It has been to see what man’s life has looked like to the Catholic poets. Thus we have not started with the 8th Century and gone steadily through to the verge of the 20th. The effort has been to choose a number of subjects covering the shape of man’s life, and find what Catholic poets from the 8th Century to the 20th have written on each of those subjects. The book is in two parts: (1) The General Framework of Mans Life (The Creation and Fall of Angels and Man, The Incarnation, - Passion and Redemption, The Last Judgment) . And (2) The Life of Man (The Kind of Being Man Is, the Kind of Thing Life Is, Love and Marriage, The Beauty of the World, The Pain of the World, Religion, Death, the Next Life). There are poems on all these themes, so that the book as a whole is the Catholic poets’ commentary on Life. We are not concerned with any paraphernalia of literary criticism—what this poet owed to that poet or this movement to that, or how this poet shows an advance in technique on that. Here are the poems. Our concern is what they have to say about life. It is marvellous to see how little difference a thousand years makes in that. Early or late, they are all fellow-Catholics, fellow to one another, fellow to us. ZOO pages $2.50 October 28 [ 16 ] Robert Farren THIS MAN WAS IRELAND “One may almost say that he is thrice a poet; by an inevitability of music and inner rhythm; by a stark sincerity of matter and of form; by a sudden eccentric, entirely orthodox mysticism.” This sentence from the Catholic World is an alert, objective analysis of Robert Farren’s earlier poems. This Man Was Ireland is an epic on the life of Saint Columcille and even more vigorous and violent than anything he has written so far. The word “epic” may have caused a faint shudder, for apart from two or three supreme masterpieces, epics seem incurably given to monotony and dullness. Robert Farren has met the danger daringly: in form his epic looks like some seventy poems, vastly various in rhythm and type : each is a poem in itself, but they are dovetailed so perfectly that they make one poem from end to end. The period of this poem is the beginning of the Golden Age of Gaelic Christianity. Its subject is one of the chief glories of Ireland and Scotland, the abbot Columcille and his community of monks; and the form of the poem, in which the life-story of the great prince and abbot is ringed around with stories of the kings, bards and druids, seems peculiarly appropriate to the subject, recalling as it does the structure of the monastic settlements—the stone church surrounded by beehive huts. Stories clustered round St. Columcille’s name even while he was alive and the cluster went on growing. Robert Farren has brought these all together, very much as Malory brought together the legends of Arthur. But whereas Arthur himself remains vague and feature- less, a memory and a promise rather than a man, Columcille has a personality vivid and unmistakable. He loves men and animals and rocks and waves; he is far advanced in sanctity; he has to conquer a fierce temper, a hot resentment, which brings all his misfortunes upon him. It has been noted that he was Irish: Robert Farren goes further: he was Ireland. For good or ill, or good and ill combined, the Irish character and destiny are summed up in him. 232 pages $2.50 November 11 [ 17 ] Alma Savage DOGSLED APOSTLES The Dogsled Apostles are heroic missionaries who come alive against a background of hunting and fishing culture along the lower Yukon where the breath of civilization has scarcely touched. The book begins when Father Crimont performed his first sacred ministry in the Alaskan territory, burying an Eskimo chief at Dutch Harbor, where 48 years later Japanese bombs were dropped. Around the turn of the century we see Francis Monroe tramping through a land full of bears where roads and trails were yet unknown: later we see him again grown old in the service, having an accident whose consequences were only revealed to the world after seven years. We see Francis Barnum and his initial efforts at compiling an Eskimo grammar on bleak Bering Sea—the long treks by sled through the sharp wind and stinging snow when the eyebrows and lashes became enmeshed with icicles and the breath congealed in flakes against the face—the light-hearted poverty of the mission communities. It is not simply that we are told of these things: we see them happening before our eyes. Dogsled Apostles is a tapestry woven out of the throbbing life stories in the frozen north. The oldest active Bishop of the country is the center of its pattern—84 years of age, 25 years Alaska’s first Bishop. The warm humanness of the book comes from the fact that its material is fresh and new, never before having been brought within the covers of a book. Here is information that would have died with its author; letters rich in detail that would never have been written; humble people who would have carried to the graves their glorious adven- tures with God, had not Miss Savage traveled over this country and through the interior of Alaska reviving and gathering these memories. 256 pages (Illustrated) $2J5 October 28 [ 18 ] Mother Margaret Williams SECOND SOWING The Life of Mary Aloysia Hardey Illustrated by Anne Pracny Out of the tragedy and suffering of the French Revolution, by heroic sanctity came the Society of the Sacred Heart, which the Blessed Philippine Duchesne brought to America in 1818. To her pioneer society of devoted religious in 1826 came Mary Ann Hardey, (later Mother Mary Aloysia), descendant of that Nicholas Hardy who came to Maryland in 1634 in that famous ship “The Ark”. She was only 15 years old when she made her profession. She was slight, serious, gay-hearted and devoted. She gave herself to the Society with a whole heartedness that but increased with age, and to which the members of her community responded with an extraor- dinary affection which comes through clearly in the gracious in- spired biography by Mother Williams. Mother Hardey was an American through and through and her life was bound up with the growth of her country. She prayed deeply as she travelled and through her prayers, direct literal thought and quietly powerful action there grew up the great founda- tions that make the Sacred Heart schools a major factor in higher education for women in America. The enormous labors of research that went into the making of this refreshing book are quite concealed by its ease of manner, through which shines clearly the fresh colors of the pioneer American scenes and the fervent hearts of the early communities. As Catholic Americana it is a “must” book, but even more impor- tant is the gracious spirit and devoted life that shines so clearly through this full flavored and delectable biography. 4 80 pages (Illustrated) $3.50 October 14 [ 19 ] Subscribers to THE THOMIST A Quarterly Review conducted by the Dominican Fathers of the Province of St. Joseph have already come to possess a MINIATURE LIBRARY bearing on the most actual problems of Religion, Science, Politics, Psychology, Sociology Before the last war, how many thinkers would bother to find out what light the philosophy of Aquinas might shed upon modern problems? In the first place the modern world felt quite competent to solve its own problems; and in the second the history of philos- ophy, as it used to be written in that far day, jumped the two thousand years from Aristotle to Descartes with the certainly that nothing had happened in the human mind between. But the world today looks more incompetent to solve its own problems and is grateful for light from anywhere; Aquinas has been so notably rediscovered that not to be aware of him “dates” a philosopher hopelessly. The Thomist, a quarterly review of speculative thought conducted by the Dominicans, St. Thomas’s own Order, has become the recog- nized clearing house of Catholic thought applied to modern prob- lems. It has given initial publication to the most recent investiga- tions of leading American philosophers, has encouraged European scholars to present their best offerings in English, and has uncovered currents of Thomistic thought in widely scattered secular universi- ties. For its regular readers it has already built a miniature library on philosophical and theological truths applied to the problems of today—and note that Thomism is the one really world-wide philoso- phy today. Other philosophies have their regions, but Thomists are everywhere, speaking in all the tongues of the civilized world. The annual subscription is $4^ for which you will receive the two numbers already published in 1942 and the two still to come. [ 20 ] GUIDED READING THE CATHOLIC MASTERPIECE TUTORIAL SERIES A. For Those Who Know About It Hundreds of Individual Readers and Dozens of Study Groups, having finished the First Series, have told us about it. The Individual Readers are invariably pleased, the Study Groups mostly pleased but with some problems—e. g.. Group Leaders who do all the talk- ing, group discussions that peter out too soon. A LEAFLET OF PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS has been prepared and will be sent to anyone who would like to have it. B. For Those Who Don’t Know About It The Series is an effort toward the formation of a Catholic Mind — that is a mind which sees the same universe that the Church sees. It consists of eight books chosen to form a closely organized eight months’ work, each with an Introduction, dovetailing that particular book with the other seven, and dividing the study of the book into four weeks of guided reading. The Introductions can be used by Individuals or Groups. The first eight books are: Whom Do You Say.^ by J. P. Arendzen Callista by John Henry Cardinal Newman Survivals and New Arrivals by Hilaire Belloc Christ in the Church by Robert Hugh Benson The Desert Fathers compiled by Helen Waddell What’s Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton The Confessions of St. Augustine translated by F. J. Sheed Poetry and Life, a New Anthology of English poetry from the Earliest Times, compiled by F. J. Sheed The price of each is $1.00, of the Set of 8 is $6.50 [21 ] Mother Elizabeth Hart MARY OF THE MAGNIFICAT The Church has enshrined the Magnificat in her ofl&cial prayer. Adorned with some of the most beautiful Antiphons in the liturgy, it holds the place of honor at Vespers just before the Collect of the day; even in the shortest Vespers of the year, on Holy Saturday, it is not omitted. When the Divine OflSce is chanted in choir, the music grows more elaborate for the Magnificat, and the incense rising before the altar calls attention to the solemnity due Our Lady’s Canticle. In this small book, the author shows us the youthful Mary—the Mary of the first four joyful mysteries, all of them viewed in the light of her Canticle. As one reads, the familiar words take on a deeper meaning, almost as though we were hearing them for the first time, and bring a sense of intimate acquaintance with the Virgin Mother of Nazareth who uttered them. They open new vistas into her thoughts and plans, her hopes and joys. They enable us to guess how it was that she found so much in God to think about, understood His ways so well, and did His will with so much love. 70 pages (Frontispiece) $1.00 October 14 Frances Margaret Fox GAY LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS Illustrated by Jill Elgin Readers of the author’s Legends of the Christ Child will scarcely need to be told what kind of book this successor is. She never deceives: she presents her stories as legends, and the word legend means “worth reading”. Her writing is invariably simple and un- affected and light-hearted. In this book we meet the Marvellous Cow of Brittany, and the Cow of St. Launomar that played Follow the Leader, the Goose to which St. Rigobert was polite, St. Roch’s dog that was wiser than other dogs, the Otters that saved the life of St. Cuthbert and a good score and a half of other marvels. The illustrations are as witty as the writing. 128 pages. Illustrated $1.50 October 21 [ 22 ] Grace Hurrell THE CHURCWS PLAY Illustrated by Anne Pracny This is a new idea for teaching children to realize the Mass. The Church, says Grace Hurrell, “makes a sort of play of the Life of Our Lord, so that we can join in and act our part in it. The Seasons—Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and so on—are the acts and the special feasts and fasts are the scenes”. \^lth this as key, she takes the child-reader through the Acts and Scenes, the Masses of the principal seasons and feasts of the Church’s year. This done she examines the structure of the Mass itself, always preserving the notion of a drama. It is all wonderfully ingenious, very clear, and very gripping. 104 pages, Illustrated $1.50 October 21 Mary Fabyan Windeatt LAD OF LIMA Illustrated by Sister Jean, O. P. Events that have nothing to do with Blessed Martin de Porres are giving him new importance. It is clear that the old relation of White and Colored cannot continue; no one knows what changes there may be, but at least there will be changes. Catholics above all should help to shape them, and of all Catholics, the children should have their minds and emotions clarified and made straight. Martin de Porres was a Negro, he is beatified, and no white child will read this story of him without feeling that in comparison with Martin’s moral and spiritual superiority his own lighter complexion is a mere irrelevance. 145 pages. Illustrated $1.50 October 21 [ 23 ] THE SHEED & WARD BOOK SOCIETY has (partly by design and partly as it chances ) drawn up the best list of its career for the now opening EIGHTH SERIES The list includes The 600-page official biography of C. K. CHESTERTON by Maisie Ward PAGEANT OF THE POPES, by John Farrow, author of Damien the Leper THE GREAT REBELLION by Eugene Bagger A COMPANION TO THE SUMMA (Vol. IV) by Walter Farrell, 0. P. GREAT MODERN SHORT STORIES OF MONKS, NUNS AND PRIESTS by Morley Callaghan, Ernest Hemingway, Agnes Repplier, L. A. G. Strong, etc., etc. OLD PRINCIPLES AND THE NEW ORDER by Vincent McNabb, 0. P. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT by Lloyd B. Holsapple THE TWILIGHT OF CIVILIZATION by Jacques Maritain THE ROAD TO VICHY by Yves Simon AND ONE OTHER 10 books — total value $27 or more — Subscription $18 [ 24 ]