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An Armenian Sketchbook   by Vasily Grossman Introduction An Armenian Sketchbook , written in early 1962, two years before Vasily Grossman’s death in September 1964, is unlike anything else Grossman wrote. It is deeply personal and has an air of spontaneity; Grossman seems simply to be chatting to the reader about his immediate impressions of Armenia—its people, its mountains, its ancient churches—and digressing, almost at random, onto subjects that range from the problem of nationalism to his views on art and even his difficulties with his bladder and bowels. The underlying cause of these physical problems was that Grossman was in the early stages of cancer, soon to be diagnosed in one of his kidneys. Just as   Everything Flows , which he began in the mid-1950s but continued to expand and revise during his last years, is Grossman’s political testament, so   An Armenian Sketchbook   is his personal testament, a discussion of the values he holds deare...

  W. H. Auden's Book of Light Verse by W. H. Auden The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables by Robert Henryson Canaan by Geoffrey Hill Post-War Polish Poetry ed by Czeslaw Milosz Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke   Flight by Linda Bierds  Come and See by Fanny Howe  Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler  Selected Cautionary Verses by Hilaire Belloc Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot  The Voice that is Great Within Us by Hayden Carruth 

Red Bird by Mary Oliver Collected Poems: 1920-54 by Eugenio Montale Human Chain by Seamus Heaney Academic Graffiti by W. H. Auden Notebook 1967-68 by Robert Lowell   Selected Poems by Robert Frost Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman   The Golden Treasury by Francis Turner Palgrave Scottish Love Poems by Antonia Fraser A Hopkins Reader by Gerard Manley Hopkins Repair: Poems by C. K. Williams

All our expressions of love, of solidarity, of sharing are but a reflection of that love which is God.   From an address God does not  simply have the desire or capacity to love; God is love: charity is his essence, it is his nature.  He is unique, but not solitary; he cannot be alone, he cannot be closed in on himself because he is communion, he is charity; and charity by its nature is communicated and shared.  In this way, God associates man to his life of love, and even if man turns away from him, God does not remain distant but goes out to meet him.  This going out to meet us, culminating in the Incarnation of his Son, is his mercy.   [full text]

Gravitational Waves Discovered: Einstein Was Right Theory of relativity confirmed. A new era in the study of the universe, black holes and the fabric of spacetime. Important Italian contribution di Paolo Virtuani At 10.50 and 45 seconds (Italian time) on 14 September 2015 the two LIGO detectors in the US (in Washington State and Louisiana) recorded something unusual. Then they started testing. And on Thursday, at 4.30 pm in Pisa (a few minutes before a similar press conference in Washington) the official announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves was finally made. For physics and science in general, 11 February 2016 will go down as an historic date. The existence of gravitational waves was predicted almost exactly a century ago, in November 1915, when Albert Einstein illustrated his general theory of relativity, of which they are a cornerstone. However, until now their existence has never been demonstrated. The news can rightly aspire to the title of “discovery of the c...

From a homily The Pontiff emphasized that the aridity of this life was accentuated by a particular detail: in speaking about this man, the Gospel “does not say what his name was; it only says that he was a rich man”. This detail is significant, because “when your name is only an adjective, it is because you have lost: you’ve lost substance, you’ve lost strength”. One might say: “this person is rich, this one is powerful, this one can do anything, this one is a career priest, a career bishop...”. It often happens, the Pope continued, that we begin to “designate people with adjectives, not with names, because they do not have substance”. This was the reality of the rich man in the day’s reading. At this point Francis asked a question: “Didn’t God who is Father, have mercy on this man? Didn’t he knock at his heart in order to move him?”. The answer: “Yes, he was at the door, he was at the door, in the person of Lazarus”. Lazarus: this man has a name. Lazarus, the Pope added, “with his...

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The Parish by Alice Taylor   North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts   Scorsese on Scorsese edited by David Thompson   Grace Like A River by Christopher Parkening   Alicia: My Story by Alicia Appleman-Jurman Our Kate by Catherine Cookson The Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin Wild Swans by Jung Chang The World The World by Norman Lewis

Part of a Journey by Philip Toynbee   Lenten Lands by Douglas Gresham Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes Hand to Mouth by Paul Auster Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer Are You Somebody? by Nuala O'Faolain Itinerary: an Intellectual Journey by Octavio Paz A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken   Isaac Stern: My First 79 Years by Isaac Stern with Chaim Potok