UDM Libraries Book of the Week

by John-Peter Pham The election of a new pope always captures the world’s attention, as all eyes turn to the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, where the color of the smoke is our only clue to the secret deliberations inside. In this fascinating volume, former Vatican insider John-Peter Pham takes us where outsiders have never gone before, providing vital background to the selection of the heir of the fisherman. Here is a highly accurate portrait of the modern Vatican–indeed, the...

by Lea VanderVelde Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford . Despite the case’s signal importance as a turning point in America’s history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the case’s judges and lawyers. In telling the life of Harriet, Dred’s wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed...

a conversation with Peter Seewald;translated by Michael J. Miller and Adrian J. Walker Foreword by George Weigel Never has a Pope, in a book-length interview, dealt so directly with such wide-ranging and controversial issues as Pope Benedict XVI does in Light of the World. Taken from a recent week-long series of interviews with veteran journalist Peter Seewald, this book tackles head-on some of the greatest issues facing the world of our time. Seewald poses such forthright questions to Pope Benedict...

By Henry Louis Gates Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship and including more than seven hundred images—ancient maps, fine art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters—Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the sixteenth century...