Philip Zaleski

In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. Lewis maps the medieval mind, accepts Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into a breath-taking story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting ground-breaking Old English scholarship and elucidating the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. This extraordinary group biography also focuses on Charles Williams, strange acolyte of Romantic love, and Owen Barfield, an esoteric philosopher who became, for a time, Saul Bellow's guru. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized sanity, Christians with cosmic reach, the inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years and did so.

Paying homage to prayer traditions from around the world and throughout history, this celebration of prayer covers everything from Pentacostalist revivals to the sacred pipe to the Catholic rosary. Reprint.

God. It's such a small word to stand for such an immense mystery. Great theologians and ordinary folks have wrestled with it and lost. But this is just as it should be, according to Irma Zaleski. Any answer to the question "Who is God?" that satisfies our minds will likely be a false one, an idea about a reality that transcends ideas. Yet there is great value in asking the question, she says, because the answer to it is found in the asking: It is in the place of not-knowing that arises from asking "Who is God?" that words and concepts fall away, that the mystery of what that little three-letter word represents is communicated directly to the heart. In forty-six short meditations, Irma Zaleski reflects on the mystery of God, the vision of faith, and the conversion of the heart that enables us to live in communion with the Ultimate Reality that reason cannot penetrate nor words express.

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 includes Mary Gordon - Natalie Goldberg - Oliver Sacks - Ptolemy Tompkins - Patricia Hampl - Gary Snyder - Charles Johnson - Harvey Cox - Todd Gitlin - Bill McKibben - Philip Levine - W. S. Merwin - and others Philip Zaleski, editor, is the author of The Recollected Heart, The Book of Heaven, and, most recently, Prayer: A History (with Carol Zaleski). He is a senior editor of Parabola and a research associate in religion at Smith College. Barry Lopez is the author of Arctic Dreams, the illustrated fable Crow and Weasel, and several essay and short story collections, including About This Life and Resistance. He has received the National Book Award and other honors.

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. The latest addition to the esteemed Best American series is a collection of the best spiritual writing of the year, introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Miles and including both prose and poetry. Series editor Philip Zaleski has chosen the volume's pieces with an eye to spirituality's many guises, from its impact on personal relationships and the environment to politics, creativity, and literature. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, secular, and pan-Hindu perspectives are all represented in these pieces, which have been selected from both mainstream and more specialized periodicals.

This text shows how people can enrich their spiritual lives and well-being with the wisdom and practices of the world's great religions, Eastern and Western, while coming to a deeper participation in their own tradition. Focusing on the essentials of human living - from everyday activities like waking up and eating to major life passages - the text offers a wealth of ways to incorporate spirituality into people's lives.