In the brutal fight that has raged in recent years over the reputation of Pope Pius XII_leader of the Catholic Church during World War II, the Holocaust, and the early years of the Cold War_the task of defending the Pope has fallen primarily to reviewers. These reviewers formulated a brilliant response to the attack on Pius, but their work was scattered in various newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals_making it nearly impossible for the average reader to gauge the results. In The Pius War, Weekly Standard's Joseph Bottum has joined with Rabbi David G. Dalin to gather a representative and powerful sample of these reviews, deliberately chosen from a wide range of publications. Together with a team of professors, historians, and other experts, the reviewers conclusively investigate the claims attacking Pius XII. The Pius War, and a detailed annotated bibliography that follows, will prove to be a definitive tool for scholars and students_destined to become a major resource for anyone interested in questions of Catholicism, the Holocaust, and World War II.

In the last three decades, many books have been published on the role of the Vatican in the modern world. Popes and Politics shows that many recent authors, whether devoted or antagonistic to the papacy, have been guilty of factual distortions and biased interpretations that lead to a flawed picture of the Church and its relation to contemporary society. Among the authors analyzed are James Carroll, John Cornwell, Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Michael Phayer, Garry Willas and Susan Zuccotti. Lawler cites 'chapter and verse' to illustrate that many of these critics are doing to the church what the Church historically did to the Jews - methodically scapegoating an imaginary enemy.

In the brutal fight that has raged in recent years over the reputation of Pope Pius XII leader of the Catholic Church during World War II, the Holocaust, and the early years of the Cold War the task of defending the Pope has fallen primarily to reviewers. These reviewers formulated a brilliant response to the attack on Pius, but their work was scattered in various newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals making it nearly impossible for the average reader to gauge the results. In The Pius War, Weekly Standard's Joseph Bottum has joined with Rabbi David G. Dalin to gather a representative and powerful sample of these reviews, deliberately chosen from a wide range of publications. Together with a team of professors, historians, and other experts, the reviewers conclusively investigate the claims attacking Pius XII. The Pius War, and a detailed annotated bibliography that follows, will prove to be a definitive tool for scholars and students destined to become a major resource for anyone interested in questions of Catholicism, the Holocaust, and World War II."

Justus George Lawler's critically acclaimed study of the work of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is, once again, available.>