A modern-day Confessions of Saint Augustine, The Seven StoreyMountain is one of the most influential religious works of thetwentieth century. This edition contains an introduction byMerton's editor, Robert Giroux, and a note to the reader bybiographer William H. Shannon. It tells of the growing restlessnessof a brilliant and passionate young man whose search for peace andfaith leads him, at the age of twenty-six, to take vows in one ofthe most demanding Catholic orders--the Trappist monks. At theAbbey of Gethsemani, "the four walls of my new freedom," ThomasMerton struggles to withdraw from the world, but only after he hasfully immersed himself in it. The Seven Storey Mountain has been afavorite of readers ranging from Graham Greene to Claire BoothLuce, Eldridge Cleaver, and Frank McCourt. And, in the half-centurysince its original publication, this timeless spiritual tome hasbeen published in over twenty languages and has touched millions oflives.
Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day a powerful and fascinating read. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West.
John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927) was an Irish historian, classical scholar and philologist. He was Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin from 1893-1902 before being Regis Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University from 1902 until his death. Bury's writings, on subjects ranging from ancient Greece to the 19th century papacy, are at once scholarly and accessible to the layman. His two works on the philosophy of history, A History of Freedom of Thought (1913) and The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (1920), elucidated the Victorian ideals of progress and rationality which undergirded his more specific histories. Bury's career shows his evolving thought process and his consideration of the discipline of history as a 'science' and not a branch of 'literature'.
