The Only Necessary Thing is not the usual book on how to pray and what makes prayer so important. It is a collection of a man's writings on his passionate believe in the Savior, and therefore, his conversations with Him. It gives a glimpse of how Henri Nouwen himself prayed and what is prayer to him. But never one time in the book does he come across as didactic. Instead, the book weaves together the essence of prayer and life in a contemplative and meditative manner. One can almost chew and "re-chew" through Nouwen's sober, frank and yet deep contemplation on his God and his conversations with Him.

Definitely, the credit of this book must also go to Wendy Greer, who has an excellent grasp of Nouwen's writings, and undoubtedly, her same passion for his God. She has put together Nouwen's best essays and writings in categories and ways that enables one to walk through each day reading snippets of the writings with a sense of continuity as well as of substance to meditate and chew for the day.

The Only Necessary Thing is a journey to the core of prayer, and that prayer is journey to the core of life.

Many exhibition catalogues, particularly for Impressionist exhibitions, just present a host of pretty pictures between attractive covers, and not much more. "Origins of Impressionism" is a wonderful exception to this rule. The essays by Henri Loyrette and Gary Tinterow sucessfully reconstruct the hidebound Paris art world of the mid-nineteenth century to help the reader understand just why "Impressionism" came to be. The greatest virtue of the book (and the exhibition which it accompanied) is that the familiar figures - Monet, Manet, Renoir, Bazille, Corot, and Courbet - are treated not as isolated visionaries, but as intelligent men grappling with a profound transformation in their world. The impressionist movement - so influential and so expensive - is portrayed as an advance in human consciousness brought about by a group of dedicated individuals whose goals did not necessarily include making vast sums of money. These people had an art that t! hey believed in - is this why we still flock to see the pictures they made? An essential addition to any art library.

This is a great book for all those dealing with the ministry of the pastoral care for the sick or those confronting a illness or death in the family. It demonstrates that although sometimes we cannot take away the physical pain of being sick or dying, often times, the most important part is not adding to the emotional, psychological and more importantly, spiritual pain that those who are suffering often feel. It is a call to compassion through Jesus, who is the best example of compassion that we have.

Here, written as snippits, the late de Lubac pounds on the anvil with a velvet hammer on subjects such as: spirit, truth, suffering, faith etc., that one is amazed, and in many cases overwhelmed by the simplicity and clarity of his thought. This in an age where people are tending to re-awaken and re-evaluate their long dormant concepts of religion and spirituality. Paradoxes Of Faith can be read in two or three sittings but its messages are voluminous.

Except for a short teaching job in Corsica, Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915) spent his life in a tiny area of western Provence. When his teaching duties and family responsibilities permitted, he studied everything in the small world around him with such careful attention and clear vision that he became one of the greatest natural historians of his time. Charles Darwin called Fabre "an incomparable observer" and Victor Hugo dubbed him "the insect's Homer." For over forty years, he scrimped to afford a piece of fallow land - L'Harmas - where he could observe native plants, birds, animals and insects in their own habitat; where, as he wrote, "I could ...engage in that difficult conversation whose questions and answers have experiment for their language." The essays in "A Passionate Observer" date from the happy period of his residence at L'Harmas. He writes poetically of the song and life of the cicada, the weeds and the insects attracted to them, the life teeming in and around a small pond. Like other scientists born before the invention of photography, Fabre perfected the art of verbal description, and his writings provide models of exact and evocative prose. The essays "My Schooling" and "Heredity" reminded us of Marcel Pagnol's memoirs of his childhood in Provence.

We read this book before one of our visits to Provence, and found our way to the site of Fabre's home and garden, now a national museum still called L'Harmas. (In the Rhone Valley, take the D976 road northwest of Orange to Serignan-du-Comtat. The route to L'Harmas is well-marked once you get close to Serignan. Avoid Orange if possible as it's unfortunately a constant traffic jam.) We stood at the gate in the wall and rang the bell to alert the caretaker of our arrival. As with many Provencal museums, the caretaker and his wife are local folk, happy to answer questions about their local hero. We visited Fabre's study, on the second floor of his home, which doubled as his herbarium, pleased to tiptoe around the workroom and laboratory of this great scholar. Floor-to-ceiling glass cases house his exhaustive natural history collections of local birds and their eggs, insects, mineral specimens, his library and his collections of antiquities. We studied the 19th century globe on his mantel, on which "Californie" is a remote and apparently unexplored territory and our own Oregon unmarked. An annex displays over a hundred delicate watercolors of mushrooms and fungi of Provence that Fabre painted, and the modest child's paintbox that he used, as well as Fabre's coin collection and local archaeological finds, including much Roman material. We most enjoyed reading an original letter from Charles Darwin, one of Fabre's correspondents. The French government unfortunately turned the wild area outside - L'Harmas - that Fabre so eagerly sought for his study of native species into an arboretum full of exotics; we would have much preferred to see Fabre's native plants. As our daughter Anne put it: "Why go around the world to see incense cedars, when they grow in our backyard?" Nevertheless, the arboretum encourages a pleasant walk through interesting plants from around the globe, and is home to local birds. Many of the plant contributions to the arboretum are from Japan, where Fabre inspires almost as much reverence as he does in his native France. In this garden we enjoyed visiting with a few other pilgrims to L'Harmas, including folks from Paris, Scotland, England and Japan.

Any student of natural history will enjoy Fabre's essays on the development of a naturalist's sensibility, and any reader who wants to visit Provence prepared to appreciate the landscape that they will encounter should pick up this treasure of a book. It's beautifully bound, artfully designed and illustrated. (Our copy would be tidier if my ethnobotanist husband hadn't stuck so many post-it notes in it as page markers, but that's a tribute to the value of the text.) Marlene McLoughlin's charming watercolors of perched villages, Provencal birds and insects, flowers, fruits, fields and village streets - found on almost every page - are alone worth the price of the book.

may be a limited edition; mine is imprinted with "4327." Cartier-Bresson's landscape photos (yes, typical of Cartier-Bresson, these are landscape-people images), some never published before. Includes a biographical essay entitled, "portrait," and two portraits of the artist--I've never seen any portraits of Cartier-Bresson anywhere else; he is not a man who likes to be photographed! Also includes a short "introductory" section to his classic works. A must-have for any Cartier-Bresson enthusiast or simply anyone who may be curious about the man who changed photographic history with "the decisive moment." A word on the "book," though: it's really a flimsy oversized magazine, but it contains excellent reproductions on good paper. I would pay up to $60 for a hardbound edition....

Preparing Yourself for the Mass, formerly Meditations Before Mass, by Romano Guardini, is a book discussing the meaning, symbolism and spirituality of the Mass. He talks about the proper way to approach the Mass, its significance, the difference between the arena of the Mass and the "marketplace" of the world, the symbolism of the words spoken, artifacts used, etc. He also discusses, interwoven in this, the significance of appearance, deportment and "external symbolism" in the body of a man - spiritual vs "worldly" man - in other words, how our outer appearance affects our inner state, and vice versa. It is a very beautiful meditation on the importance of atmosphere, appearance, dignity and respect, and the importance of being able to discern chaos, bad taste, noise, affliction and those things which mitigate against right relationship with God. This is very important for the age we live in, in which things spiritual are often under severe attack. Highly recommended.

French scholar Hubert's classic history, Rise Of The Celts, traces the rise of the Celts and their influence on Indo-European peoples. Archaeological evidence support Hubert's investigation into the migration of Celtics into Europe and the British Isles, with black and white drawings and maps peppering a classic account recommended for high school levels on up.

Dr. Nebot throws himself into the task ot THE ROAD TO EXILE with the hungry verve of a man who cannot have enough of discovering his true roots. The result of this labor of love is a sprawling saga describing several generations of the Jewish-Spanish Benavista family. It features a gallery of Elizabethan personalities: passionate, larger-than-life, and compelling, each meticulously crafted and cast into violently varying historic circumstances. The events take place amid the rich and treacherous backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition's infamous reign of terror, the twilight of Spain's Moorish Golden Age, the travails in the Mediterranean waters, and the harrowing sands of the Sahara. These, however, the narrative asserts, pale in comparison with the dark and torrid compulsions of the heart. While Dr. Nebot's command of the historical scenarios is impressive, it is his personal, self-indulging attitude: the unabashed, reckless pleasure taken in loving, idealizing, and engaging his ancestors, that makes this book captivating. Herein, the saga departs from the strictures of scholarly history and is liberated into its expanse of interwoven stories. Despite the painful, pessimistic scenarios of so many outrageous fortunes, from time to time there surfaces a still deeper conviction of the writer: an abiding trust in Divine Providence and in its benevolent intent. The book was translated from the original French into English by Dr. Henri Moyal. It is a must-book for any Sephardic Jew and all lovers of a good read.

As a student of cathedral and church architecture, I found this book to be highly informative, yet readable and engaging. The author's introduction to the subject evidences excellent research, and as the book progresses each subject is treated with admirable detail. The photographs are exquisite- each subject is shown from the best possible vantage point. The pivotal churches of St. Sernin in Toulouse and Ste. Foy in Conques are discussed in detail. This treatise is one of the best of its kind- a purchase that you will not regret.