The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, David Brooks. (Random House, 2019). In this book, David Brooks explores the four commitments that are usually taken to define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. It is a provocative social commentary about how our individualism has led us away from rooting ourselves in a neighbourhood and binding ourselves to other people in social…

Educated, Tara Westover. (Harper Collins, 2018). This is the remarkable autobiography of a young woman raised in Nevada by an unorthodox Mormon father whose strongly held and unshakeable paranoid beliefs caused terrible damage to his children. It is also the story of her escape, first to Brigham Young University and then to Cambridge, an escape that for her was imperative but whose high price was the lasting destruction of most of her family relationships. The story is told in vivid…

The Cloud of Unknowning, Anonymous. (Shambhalla, 2014). This is a fourteenth-century text is one of the great classics of English mysticism. It will enrich our own contemplative/mystical lives, and raise questions like: How important is contemplation to the spiritual life? Is mystical union with God possible? Is it for everyone? Is there Scriptural warrant for this? How does Christian mysticism differ from Buddhist mysticism? The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing our Humanity, Sally Kohn. (Chapel Hill: Algonquin…