Thomas Cahill: Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Doubleday 1999 (new printings).

Second reading of this stimulating book proves as explosive as the first round. This is for me among the three great insprirational non-fiction texts to come out in recent years. Page by page it makes me go deeper into the seemingly familiar themes and stories surrounding Jesus. While well-researched, the book radiates warmth and promise and - in line with the author's interest in "the great gift-givers", in "the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else". The book itself is a unique gift for anyone intellectually tuned and emotionally charged to the theme of the auspicious, the beautiful in human existence. Cahill is truly remarkable mind with a great gift to true significance, storytelling and he has rarefied sensitivities to the essential.