When We Were the Kennedys
By Monica Wood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)

Monica Wood writes that her book When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine “results from my having been an observant child living in a vibrant place and time.” Amen, especially to the word observant.

Mothers of the Church
By Mike Aquilina & Christopher Bailey (OSV, 2012)

In elementary school I always looked forward to women’s history month each March. Unfortunately, by sixth grade the basic lesson—that in the past women were denied things like voting and jobs just because they were women—was growing a little stale. Things weren’t much better at religious education, where the lessons about women all focused on Mary.

Locked Down
Dr. John
(Nonesuch Records, 2012)

In the deranged days of 1968, New Orleans musician Mac Rebennack decided to join the fun by dubbing himself Dr. John the Night Tripper, taking to the stage in a Mardi Gras Indian-inspired costume and making music thoroughly marinated in his hometown’s Afro-Caribbean musical traditions and religious lore.

May 2012:

Jesus and the Emergence of a Catholic Imagination

By John Pfordresher

Review:

In this fascinating account, John Pfordresher, an English professor at Georgetown University, traces the roots of the Catholic imagination from Jesus to the arts of the West through the centuries.