Fordham University Press

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) was one of the most prolific and influential theologians of the twentieth century. This book, the first English-language study of Balthasar, seeks to show the fruitfulness of his thought by drawing out its philosophical implications for the question of truth.

D. C. Schindler argues that a "dramatic" approach, shaping both the form and content of philosophy, enables a new conception of being, of human consciousness, and of their coming together to satisfy both traditional concerns about unity and postmodern calls for difference-while avoiding the pitfalls of a one-sided emphasis on either.

Now in paperback, this important book explores the central role of historical thought in the full range of Heidegger’s thought, both the early writings leading up to Being and Time, and after the “reversal” or Kehre that inaugurated his later work.

Barash examines Heidegger’s views on history in a richly developed context of debates that transpired in the early 20th-century German philosophy of history.

He addresses a key unifying theme—the problem of historical meaning and the search for coherent criteria of truth in an era of historical relativism—as he traces the engagement with historicity throughout all major epochs and works.

Barash revises this edition to explore new material, including Heidegger’s lecture course texts from 1910 to 1923, and adds an expanded, updated bibliography.

“It was then, sometime in February 1996, that Lois stopped trying to read and told me: ‘I do believe I have Alzheimer’s.’ She said it in the way she might say, ‘I think I’ll buy a new dress.’ She didn’t say how she came by her belief, nor did I ask. I just put my arms around her.”

And for the next five years, Ed Bliss’s arms were always around his beloved Lois. In this rare book of remembrance and love and loneliness, Ed Bliss chronicles Lois’s six-year journey into darkness. Spare, gentle, restrained, Bliss’s account of Lois’s struggle with Alzheimer’s is an unforgettable account of loss—whether of the ability to speak and write or even to eat—and helplessness in the face of a disease that knows no cure.

Ed Bliss captures not just the terrible course of the disease, but the small moments that marked each stage of their last years together, from the last time Lois legibly wrote her name or went shopping to an unexpected joy because her Red Sox had won a game. Ed and Lois, in love for 60 years, only deepened their affections as they faced each new challenge.

Lois Bliss died in 2001, at home, surrounded by family. Part memoir, part diary, this book conveys what all caregivers face in dealing with Alzheimer’s. But it is more than a tale of pain. “In the end, grief turned to gratitude,” Ed Bliss writes. “What was cruel was no match for love.”

In this portrait of Dubuque, Iowa, Russell Johnson combines personal narratives with social, political, and economic analysis to shed new light on what the War meant for one city and for the rapidly growing north.

Johnson examines the experiences of Dubuque’s soldiers and their families to answer crucial questions: What impact did the Civil War have on the economic and social life of Dubuque? How did military service affect the social mobility of veterans? And how did army service, as a form of industrial organization, help create a modern workforce?

Warriors into Workers makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the formation of American industrial society, and addresses key issues in labor history, military history, political culture, and gender.

In this innovative book, Kyle Sinisi explores a little-known chapter in the history of American politics—the struggle between states and the federal government over the costs of fighting the Civil War. At stake was the disposition of some 8 million.

Focusing on Kansas, Kentucky, and Missouri, Sinisi explores the process by which states were reimbursed by Washington in the most expensive intergovernmental contact of the 19th century. Recasting our understanding of governance, he shows that traditional sources of influence—courts and political parties—were less important in settling claims than adjutants general and private agents who fought for cash bonanzas. These power brokers helped shape the federal bureaucracy—and the process of state building.

Over the past two decades, the world has witnessed alarming environmental degradation—climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the pollution of natural resources—together with a failure to implement environmental policies and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. As this new volume of his writings reveals, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has continually proclaimed the primacy of spiritual values in determining environmental ethics and action. For him, the predicament we face is not primarily ecological but in fact spiritual: The ultimate aim is to see all things in God, and God in all things.

On Earth as in Heaven demonstrates just why His All Holiness has been dubbed the “Green Patriarch” by former Vice President Al Gore (recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental activism) and the media.
This third and final volume of the spiritual leader’s selected writings showcases his statements on environmental degradation, global warming, and climate change. It contains numerous speeches and interviews in various circumstances, including ecological symposia, academic seminars, and regional and international events, over the first twenty years of his ministry. This volume also encompasses a selection of pastoral letters and exhortations—ecclesiastical, ecumenical, and academic—by His All Holiness for occasions such as Easter and Christmas, honorary doctorates, and academic awards.

On Earth as in Heaven is a rich collection, essential for religious scholars, those looking for a deeper understanding of Orthodox Christianity, and anyone concerned with the environmental and social issues we face today.

In this powerfully argued book, Knasas engages a debate at the heart of the revival of Thomistic thought in the twentieth century. Richly detailed and illuminating, his book calls on the tradition established by Gilson, Maritain, and Owen, to build a case for Existential Thomism as a valid metaphysics.

Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists is a comprehensive discussion of the major issues and controversies in neo-Thomism, including issues of mind, knowledge, the human subject, free will, nature, grace, and the act of being. Knasas also discusses the Transcendental Thomism of Maréchal, Rahner, Lonergan, and others as he builds a carefully articulated case for completing the Thomist revival.

On his first day in basic training in 1942, Lawrence Cane wrote his wife Grace from Fort Dix, New Jersey. "I'm in the army now?really!" he wrote, complaining, "I don't have enough time to write a decent letter."


Three years later, Capt. Lawrence Cane went home from World War II. He'd landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, helped liberate France and Belgium, and survived the Battle of the Bulge. He won a Silver Star for bravery. And he still managed to write 300 letters home to Grace. This book is a different kind of war story--both an powerful chronicle of life in battle and a unique portrait of courage fueled by a life-long passion for political justice.


Cane's fight for freedom began well before D-Day. In 1937, joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and got wounded fighting for democracy in Spain. In 1942, at age 30, he enlisted in the new war against fascism, and as an officer with the 238th Combat Engineer Battalion, went ashore in Normandy to clear mines, destroy fortifications, and open roads from Normandy to the Siegfried Line. Of the 400 Spanish Civil War veterans in World War II, Cane was the only one to go ashore on D-Day.


After the war, Lawrence Cane fought for civil rights and peace until his death in 1976. Discovered in 1995 by Cane's son David, his letters are not only classic accounts of war and unforgettable expressions of love for family. They are the fiercely patriotic words of a left-wing, working-class New York Jew (and one-time Communist Party member) who knew exactly why we fought---to create a better world by destroying all forms of fascism, one battle at a time.


With a fascinating introduction by David Cane, detailed notes, and much additional material, these letters add a new dimension to the meaning of American patriotism and an invaluable chapter to the history of "the greatest generation."

Rabbi, writer, teacher, activist, and organizer, Marc H. Tanenbaum was for more than three generations at the center of the struggle for religious understanding and human rights. As a pioneer in ecumenical dialogue, Tanenbaum left an inedible mark on many communities of faith.

This rich collection of Tanenbaum’s most influential writings underscores his contributions to civil and human rights, international affairs and—above all—the development of Jewish-Christian understanding and mutual respect. Special features of this book include a biographical essay and introductions to the major issues and the essays.

Compelling and prophetic, Dorothy Day is one of the most enduring icons of American Catholicism. In the depths of the Great Depression and guided by the Works of Mercy, Day, a journalist at the time, published a newspaper, the Catholic Worker, and co-founded a movement dedicated to the poorest of the poor, while living with them and sharing their poverty.

In 1955, Vivian Cherry, a documentary photographer known for her disturbing and insightful work portraying social issues, was given unprecedented access to the Catholic Worker house of hospitality in New York City, its two farms, and to Day herself. While much has been written about Day, the portrait that emerges from Cherry’s intimate lens is unrivaled. From the image of the line of men waiting for soup outside St. Joseph’s on Chrystie Street to pictures of Day and others at work and in prayer, Cherry’s photographs offer a uniquely personal and poetic glimpse into the life of the movement and its founder.

In this beautiful new book, more than sixty photographs—many published here for the first time—are accompanied by excerpts of Day’s writings gleaned from her column “On Pilgrimage” and other articles published in the Catholic Worker between 1933 and 1980. The result is a powerful visual and textual memoir capturing the life and times of one of the most significant and influential North American Catholics of the twentieth century. The aptly paired images and words bring new life to Day’s political and personal passions and reflect with clarity and simplicity the essential work and philosophies of the Catholic Worker, which continue to thrive today. The Introduction and additional commentary by Day’s granddaughter Kate Hennessy
provides rich contextual information about the two women and what she sees as their collaboration in this book.

In 2000, twenty years after her death, Archbishop of New York John J. O’Connor of New York City opened the cause for Dorothy Day’s canonization, and the Vatican conferred on her the title of Servant of God. The Catholic Worker continues to flourish, with more than 200 affiliated houses in the United States and overseas. The miracle of this enduring appeal lies in Day’s unique paradigm of vision, conscience, and a life of sacrifice that is one not of martyrdom but of joy, richness, and generosity—vividly portrayed through these photographs and excerpts.

Centering on cross-fertilization between the writings of Shakespeare and Donne, the essays in this volume examine relationships that are broadly cultural, theoretical, and imaginative. They emphasize the intersection of physical dimensions of experience with transcendent ones, whether moral, intellectual, or religious. They juxtapose lyric and sermons interactively with narrative and plays.

The essays are grouped under four headings: “Time, Love, Sex, and Death” (Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker, Catherine Gimelli Martin, Jennifer Pacenza), “Moral, Public, and Spatial Imaginaries” (Mary Blackstone and Jeanne Shami, Douglas Trevor), “Names, Puns, and More” (Marshall Grossman, David Lee Miller, Julian Lamb), and “Realms of Privacy and Imagination” (Anita Gilman Sherman, Judith H. Anderson).

Genealogies of Fiction is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and renaissance chivalric epic, focused on Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. Relying on the direct study of manuscripts and incunabula, this project challenges the fixed distinction between medieval and early modern texts and
reclaims medieval popular epic as a key source for the Furioso.

Tracing the formation of the character of the warrior woman, from the Amazon to Bradamante, the book analyzes the process of gender construction in early modern Italy. By reading the tension between the representations of women as fighters, lovers, and mothers, this study shows how the warrior woman is a symbolic center for the construction of legitimacy in the complex web of fears and expectations of the
Northern Italian Renaissance court.

In his nearly 50-year career teaching philosophy and theology at Fordham and other distinguished universities, Avery Cardinal Dulles wrote and traveled extensively, writing 25 books and more than 800 articles, book reviews, forewords, introductions, and letters to the editor, translated into at least 14 languages and distributed worldwide. This work serves as a companion to the previous volume of McGinley Lectures, published as Church and Society (Fordham, 2008), and also provides an independent research guide for scholars, theologians, and anyone interested in American Catholicism in the decades immediately before and following the Second Vatican Council.

From his poems and reflections composed in prep school, where he first crossed paths with John Fitzgerald Kennedy (with whom he would graduate from Harvard in 1940), to a private meeting in his last days arranged at Pope Benedict XVI’s personal request, the book explores a theological topography that includes truly monumental figures and events of the modern era. As the product of perhaps the most influential American Catholic theologian in history, Dulles’s writings continue to inspire and shape the way theology has been studied and practiced in academic institutions throughout the United States and the world.

Having worked closely with Cardinal Dulles, the editors have compiled an exhaustive bibliography of his works and have included a series of essays that shed light on the twilight of his life, one that intersects with ecclesiastical, theological, philosophical, and political leaders of every stripe and worldview. Contributions include Dulles’s farewell lecture as McGinley Professor of Religion and Society with a stirring response by Robert Imbelli; a reflection on the cardinal’s last days by longtime research assistant Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P.; and the moving homily given at his funeral by Edward Cardinal Egan. The book also chronicles Cardinal Dulles’s relationship with Fordham University, where he began his academic career as a Jesuit regent, teaching philosophy (1951–53), and where, for the last twenty years of his life, he held an endowed chair named in honor of a former president of Fordham, Laurence J. McGinley, S.J. This text will serve as a liminal passageway into the splendid mansion of Dulles’s thought for theologians, scholars, believers, and all thinking men and women of goodwill.

An exceptionally timely book by a leading European exponent of Muslim intellectual tradition, On the Other: A Muslim View is a concise and accessible exploration of the foundations of Islamic thought on human nature, our place in the cosmos, and our proper relationship to the divine, based on peace, knowledge, love, beauty, humility, and respect for and acceptance of others and difference.

Applying sound linguistic and historical scholarship and a profound knowledge of the Qur'anic sources, the author analyzes the key Arabic terms to show that Islam is a religion of peace, rather than of irrational submission to some higher instance.

Having demonstrated how poor cultural translation of core terms has contributed to a distorted picture of Islam in the West and among some Muslims, the author provides systematic explication of the most important concepts and beliefs of the Muslim tradition, as well as interpretation of the symbolism underlying its most important practices as one of the paths through which God calls us to Himself. In doing so, he tackles directly the claim that the Holy Qur'an enjoins hatred, violence, bigotry, and racism, particularly against the Jews. By clear exposition and contextualization of some of the most controversial and most frequently cited verses, he demonstrates how they have been misunderstood and misapplied, misrepresenting a message of profound respect for the multiple paths to God and the multitude of his prophets and for the variety and radical difference that is constitutive of humanity. The author shows that in reality these misunderstood verses represent a plea for the recognition of and respect for difference, one that is timelier now more than ever.

On the Other: A Muslim View provides an excellent introduction to the Muslim intellectual tradition for those who wish to penetrate beyond the stereotypes put forward by ideologists on both sides of the East-West divide, an introduction that reveals the rational, tolerant, and fundamentally peaceful faith of the vast majority of practicing Muslims.