A Universal Man

From the bestselling and award-winning author of ‘An English Affair’, a dazzlingly original thematic biography which throws fresh light on the greatest economist of the twentieth century.

Completed in 1173, The Book of Divine Works (Liber Divinorum Operum) is the culmination of the Visionary’s Doctor’s theological project, offered here for the first time in a complete and scholarly English translation. The first part explores the intricate physical and spiritual relationships between the cosmos and the human person, with the famous image of the universal Man standing astride the cosmic spheres. The second part examines the rewards for virtue and the punishments for vice, mapped onto a geography of purgatory, hellmouth, and the road to the heavenly city. At the end of each Hildegard writes extensive commentaries on the Prologue to John’s Gospel (Part 1) and the first chapter of Genesis (Part 2)—the only premodern woman to have done so. Finally, the third part tells the history of salvation, imagined as the City of God standing next to the mountain of God’s foreknowledge, with Divine Love reigning over all.

Schriever (USAF, ret.), the father of the USAF ballistic missile program; and Dr. William Pickering, former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was the twentieth century's most influential economist. His ideas inspired Franklin D. Roosevelt to launch the New Deal and instructed Western nations on how to ward off revolutionary unrest, economic instability, high unemployment, and social dissolution. Keynes was nothing less than the Adam Smith of his time: his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Moneybecame as important in the twentieth century as Smith's The Wealth of Nations was in the eighteenth. Now, in the long wake of the 2008 global economic collapse, Keynesian economics is once again shaping our world. In Universal Man, acclaimed historian Richard Davenport-Hines offers the first biography of Keynes that reveals the man in full. Like many Englishmen of his class and era, Keynes compartmentalized his life. Accordingly, Davenport-Hines treats Keynes in turn as a youthful prodigy, a powerful government official, an influential public man, a bisexual living in the shadow of Oscar Wilde's persecution, a devotee of the arts, and an international statesman of worldwide renown. Delving into Keynes's experiences and thought, Davenport-Hines shows us a man who was equally at ease socializing with the Bloomsbury Group as he was persuading heads of state to adopt his policies. Through Davenport-Hines' nuanced portrait, we come to understand not just the most enduringly influential economist of the modern era, but one of the most gifted and vital men of our times: a disciplined logician with a capacity for glee who persuaded people, seduced them, subverted old ideas, and installed new ones. Engaging, learned, and sparkling with wit and insight, Universal Man is the perfect match for its brilliant subject.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.

A collection of Aphorisms and Observations