This February 15th through 18th, Notre Dame Press is having a flash sale! All books published in published in 2020 and earlier are 50% off. These books share incredible stories and are gems simply waiting to be uncovered. Here are some of our Notre Dame students’ favorite back list reads!
The Evening of Life examines the challenges of aging and dying well to combat the social conceptions of what it means to live and age well. It calls for a re-envisioning of cultural concepts, practices, and virtues that embraces decline, dependency, and finitude rather than stigmatizes them. This collection of essays proposes a positive understanding of thriving in old age that is rooted in our shared vulnerability as human beings.
“In this important and provocative book, the editors and authors make a compelling case for a much needed ‘ethics of aging’ that holistically addresses the unique character of the aging process and its role in defining a ‘good life.'”
—Daniel B. Hinshaw, MD, author of Touch and the Healing of the World
Black Domers: African-American Students at Notre Dame in Their Own Words tells the compelling story of racial integration at the University of Notre Dame in the post–World War II era. In a series of seventy-five essays, beginning with the first African-American to graduate from Notre Dame in 1947 to a member of the class of 2017 who also served as student body president, we can trace the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the African-American experience at Notre Dame through seven decades.
“Some stories need to be lived in order to be told truthfully, truly and fully. But even an African-American student would be unable to tell the story of being black at Notre Dame because there is no single story, no singular experience, no one person who can speak for all who have come here from so many places, families, and personal histories. It would take a book to explain. And one with many voices. Now we have that book.”
— Kerry McPhee Temple, editor, Notre Dame Magazine
James T. Connelly C.S.C.’s The History of the Congregation of Holy Cross offers an inspiring account of the community of Catholic priests and brothers who ministered, educated, and evangelized around the globe. This sweeping book details the first complete history of the Congregation, covering nearly two centuries from 1820 to 2018. Connelly documents the expansion of their mission to other parishes and educational institutions, including the University of Notre Dame.
“This is an important contribution to the history of the order from its early days in Le Mans, France, to its international institutional footprint at the end of the twentieth century. James Connelly has produced an important, incredibly well-researched volume.”
—William B. Kurtz, co-editor of Soldiers of the Cross, the Authoritative Text
Magda Hollander-Lafon shares her personal and powerful accounts of her survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau internment in her astounding book Four Scraps of Bread. Serving as a reflection of what she endured, Hollander-Lafon writes her book not to obey the duty of remembering but in loyalty to the memory of those women and men who disappeared before her eyes.This incredible book is both historical and deeply evocative, melancholic, and at times poetic in nature.
“An extraordinary memoir that is a valued and appreciated addition to the growing library of Holocaust literature, Four Scraps of Bread is unreservedly and emphatically recommended for community, college, and university library collections.”
—Midwest Book Review
In his fascinating new book, Rituals for the Dead: Religion and Community in the Medieval University of Paris, William Courtenay examines aspects of the religious life of one medieval institution, the University of Paris, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In place of the traditional account of teaching programs and curriculum, however, the focus here is on religious observances and the important role that prayers for the dead played in the daily life of masters and students.
” . . . a fresh perspective on the devotional activities of masters and students at the University of Paris, especially how ‘[d]eath transform[ed] an academic community into a religious community for the cult of the dead'”
—Reading Religion
Bill Meissner’s novel Spirits in the Grass describes the transformation of Luke Tanner, a thirty-something baseball player helping to build a new baseball field in his beloved hometown of Clearwater, Wisconsin. His discovery of a small bone fragment within the field involves many of the individuals of his community, changes the lives of everyone involved.
“This leisurely paced story reveals small town life in all of its simple pleasures and suffocating traditions as one man tries to unite everyone on the playing field.”
—Daily Herald-Tribune
Thomas E. Blantz C.S.C. ‘s The University of Notre Dame: A History tells the story of the renowned Catholic university’s growth and development from a primitive grade school and high school founded in 1842 by the Congregation of Holy Cross to the acclaimed undergraduate and research institution it became by the early twenty-first century. This book highlights the remarkable leaders who took part in developing the University to its present glory, including Father Edward Sorin, the twenty-eight-year-old French priest and visionary founder. By capturing the strong connections that exist between Notre Dame’s founding and early life and today’s university, Blantz creates the most complete and up-to-date history of the university available.
“A great university deserves a great institutional history. This work fills the void. And, as a case study, it fleshes out some legacies of Catholic higher education as part of the development of American higher education writ large.”
—John Thelin, author of A History of American Higher Education
Pity the Drowned Horses, winner of the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, is a poetry collection about place, family, and home, both in the desert southwest on the U.S./Mexico border in El Paso, Texas and within the broader context of the border as both a bridge and a barrier.
“Sheryl Luna’s debut collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, poses several questions about the meaning of ‘home’: is it rooted to a particular place? Can we escape it? Can we find it elsewhere? Once we’ve left, can we return? . . . She circles through various locales and landscapes, including San Francisco, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Prague, and Paris, but like the frayed-wing hawk who drifts through the collection, Luna’s speaker is drawn, slightly battered, back to the desert of her origins.”
—Latino Poetry Review
In Mary on the Eve of the Second Vatican Council, Editors John C. Cavadini and Danielle M. Peters converse with the unique association between the Blessed Virgin Mary and Catholicism through the lens of Catholic Marian studies. These essays highlight Mary’s principal role in Catholic faith, theology, and Marianology.
“This volume is an important contribution to the field of Mariology that re-orients us to the theological and historical context in which the eighth chapter of Lumen Gentium was written. Cavadini and Peters ought to be commended for this invitation to recapture the wisdom of this Marian Age before the Council in order to allow it to bear fruit today.”
—Reading Religion