The Best Spiritual Writing 2010

The Best Spiritual Writing 2010

The renowned nonfiction annual makes its Penguin debut For more than a decade, Philip Zaleski has collected into a single volume the best spiritual essays and poetry of the year. The Best Spiritual Writing 2010 , featuring essays by John Updike and Diane Ackerman, poems from Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney and Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Glück, and personal reflections by Richard Rodriguez and Leon Wieseltier, is sure to expand on the series' already wide recognition and reach the growing audience of readers searching for unsurpassed spiritual writing. Contributors include: Mary Jo Bang, Jane Hirshfield, Melissa Range, Rick Bass, Paula Huston, Pattiann Rogers, David Berlinski, Pico Iyer, Amanda Shaw, Joseph Bottum, Charles Johnson, Master Sheng Yen, Nicholas Carr, Jon D. Levenson, Floyd Skloot, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Philip Levine, Meir Soloveichik, Billy Collins, Wilfred M. McClay, Richard Wilbur, Chrisi Cox, Richard John Neuhaus, Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky *Starred Review* Among the highlights of the latest, reliably bracing volume in editor Zaleski’s not exactly annual series are Diane Ackerman’s comments about two Jews, a pediatrician and a Hasidic rabbi, who chose to stay in the Warsaw ghetto and, despite the horror surrounding them, maintain Judaic meditation and mysticism; Seamus Heaney’s brief but lovely paean to the birch tree; Jon D. Levenson on the idea of the chosen people; the late Richard John Neuhaus on secularization theory; and Leon Wieseltier on the ineffable beauty of church bells. Some essays are spiritual in the broadest sense of the word. Nicholas Carr wonders whether Google is making us stupid (“The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”). Google’s founders, he reminds us, say their goal is to turn the search engine into an artificial intelligence surpassing the HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey and, presumably, take a big chunk of our humanity from us in the process. Finally, the late John Updike is represented by a poignant essay on the writer in winter. In addition, quite a few poets’ work appears, including Mary Jo Bang’s translation of the first canto of Dante’s Inferno and poems by Billy Collins, Louise Glück, Jane Hirshfield, Philip Levine, Robert Pinsky, Melissa Range, Floyd Skloot, and Richard Wilbur. --June Sawyers Philip Zaleski is the founding editor of the Best Spiritual Writing series and the co-author, most recently, of Prayer: A History . Pico Iyer is the author of several books about faith and crossing cultures in the modern world. His most recent book is The Open Road . New Mint Condition Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon Guaranteed packaging No quibbles returns