Best Biographies of Catholicism

Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his body during the surgery–and authenticated that claim by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on. Retold by his father, but using Colton’s uniquely simple words, Heaven Is for Real offers a glimpse of the world that awaits us, where as Colton says, “Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses.”. To see a brand new note from Colton regarding the truth behind other "Heaven" stories, go to heavenlive.org/colton.

When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of thirteen girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease. She invites us into her story and pushes us to the edge, challenging us to dare to hope no matter what life throws at us.” —Jefferson Bethke , author of Jesus>Religion and It’s Not What You Think. Her words and heart for Jesus will stay with me forever, and I’m honored to be on the sidelines cheering for all the chapters to come.” —Angie Smith , speaker, blogger, and author of Seamless. She invites us into her story and pushes us to the edge, challenging us to dare to hope no matter what life throws at us.”. —Jefferson Bethke, author of Jesus>Religion and It’s Not What You Think. “Every page of this book is a piece of Katie’s heart. It’s another thing to wrestle with Him in the trenches and come out assured on the other side.”. —Korie Robertson, New York Times best-selling author and star of A&E’s Duck Dynasty. Her words and heart for Jesus will stay with me forever, and I’m honored to be on the sidelines cheering for all the chapters to come.”. —Angie Smith, speaker, blogger, and author of Seamless.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas comes a brilliant and inspiring biography of the most influential man in modern history, Martin Luther, in time for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. On All Hallow’s Eve in 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther posted a document he hoped would spark an academic debate, but that instead ignited a conflagration that would forever destroy the world he knew. A beautifully balanced separation of fact from fiction.” —Hugh Hewitt “If you had to make a list of five people who shaped the modern West, Martin Luther would be on it. With a light and rapid touch that nonetheless is capable of conveying deep truths and insights, Metaxas deftly blends these many elements into a narrative that reads as compellingly as a novel. I imagine that Luther himself—not an easy man to please—would be deeply impressed by this master portraiture.” —Mark Helprin, bestselling author of Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War. With his customary verve and elegance, profound reverence, and biting wit, Metaxas’s Martin Luther is an education in the meaning of man’s relation to God. Gerald L. Schroeder, lecturer and teacher at College of Jewish Studies Aish HaTorah’s Discovery Seminar “This massive but eminently readable biography of Luther deserves no less an adjective than ‘formidable.’ Eric Metaxas is to religious biographers what Pixar is to cartoons.” —Peter Kreeft, author of Catholics and Protestants: What Can We Learn from Each Other? “If you wish to know why Martin Luther is remembered as one of the most consequential figures in history, and why Eric Metaxas has emerged as one of the most prominent storytellers of our generation, you’ll find the answers in this book. Eric’s skill as a writer and biographer are on full display here, even as he corrects the myths and secures the history of a monk who changed the world.” —John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. “A biography designed to peel back the myths and reveal Luther as the fascinating and influential man he was . the author’s fast-paced style and attention to interesting details sets this 450-page book apart.” —Institute for Faith, Work & Economics “Turns some centuries-long legends upside down.” —The Blaze “A masterful portrait of a seminal figure.” — Booklist (starred review) “A meaty autobiography of the Reformation leader. Bold, fast-paced, and magisterial like its hero, yet always stylish and witty like its author, this account blows the cobwebs off long-settled expectations, and helps us to understand the man who shook the medieval world and helped to shape the modern world.” —Os Guinness, author of Impossible People “When Martin Luther made it possible to read the Bible for yourself, he did more than anyone else to create the future. Read this book for yourself to understand the story we’re all still living through.” —Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, entrepreneur, and author of Zero to One “Eric Metaxas has blessed us with yet another indispensable biography. With his customary verve and elegance, profound reverence, and biting wit, Metaxas’s Martin Luther is an education in the meaning of man’s relation to God. Gerald L. Schroeder, lecturer and teacher at College of Jewish Studies Aish HaTorah’s Discovery Seminar “This massive but eminently readable biography of Luther deserves no less an adjective than ‘formidable.’ Eric Metaxas is to religious biographers what Pixar is to cartoons.” —Peter Kreeft, author of Catholics and Protestants: What Can We Learn from Each Other? A tour de force.” —Johnnie Moore, Jr., founder of The Kairos Company “If you wish to know why Martin Luther is remembered as one of the most consequential figures in history, and why Eric Metaxas has emerged as one of the most prominent storytellers of our generation, you’ll find the answers in this book. Eric’s skill as a writer and biographer are on full display here, even as he corrects the myths and secures the history of a monk who changed the world.” —John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” ( Los Angeles Times ) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. A vivid, persuasive portrait.” — Salon “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.” — San Francisco Chronicle “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Compulsively readable . Q. Yours is one of the few popular biographies of Jesus of Nazareth that does not rely on the gospels as your primary source of information for uncovering Jesus’ life. A. I certainly rely on the gospels to provide a narrative outline to my biography of Jesus of Nazareth, but my primary source in recreating Jesus’ life are historical writings about first century Palestine, like the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, as well as Roman documents of the time. In other words, the gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man. To get to the bottom of that mystery, which is what I try to do in the book, one must sift through the gospel stories to analyze their claims about Jesus in light of the historical facts we know about the time and world in which Jesus lived. But the more I read the Bible – especially in college, where I began my formal study of the New Testament – the more I uncovered a wide chasm between the Jesus of history and the Jesus I learned about in church. But the irony is that once I detached my academic study of Jesus from my faith in Christ, I became an even more fervent follower of Jesus of Nazareth. So in a way, this book is my attempt to spread the good news of Jesus the man with the same passion that I once applied to spreading the good news of Jesus the Christ. The key to understanding who Jesus was and what Jesus meant lies in understanding the times in which he lived. Aslan, who authored the much acclaimed No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, offers a compelling argument for a fresh look at the Nazarene, focusing on how Jesus the man evolved into Jesus the Christ. Approaching the subject from a purely academic perspective, the author parts an important curtain that has long hidden from view the man Jesus, who is every bit as compelling, charismatic, and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ. Carefully comparing extra-biblical historical records with the New Testament accounts, Aslan develops a convincing and coherent story of how the Christian church, and in particular Paul, reshaped Christianity's essence, obscuring the very real man who was Jesus of Nazareth.

The Autobiography of a Yogi. The work is enduringly popular because it introduces millions of readers to Eastern spiritual thought. The yogi begins by showing how his childhood experiences in turn-of-the-century India produced a spiritual youth in search of an enlightened teacher, continues with an account of his years of training in the hermitage of a revered master, and concludes with the highlights of a period, beginning in 1920, during which he lived and taught in America.

A new edition of the landmark, worldwide bestseller on the life of the famed medical clairvoyant and founding father of the New Age: Edgar Cayce. Thomas Sugrue (1907-1953) was a widely respected world-traveling journalist who wrote for many of the nation's leading newspapers and magazines. Mitch Horowitz is a PEN Award-winning author who has also written for Science of Mind, New Dawn, Parabola, Fortean Times , and the Religion News Service.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” ( Los Angeles Times ) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. A vivid, persuasive portrait.” — Salon “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.” — San Francisco Chronicle “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Compulsively readable . Q. Yours is one of the few popular biographies of Jesus of Nazareth that does not rely on the gospels as your primary source of information for uncovering Jesus’ life. A. I certainly rely on the gospels to provide a narrative outline to my biography of Jesus of Nazareth, but my primary source in recreating Jesus’ life are historical writings about first century Palestine, like the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, as well as Roman documents of the time. In other words, the gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man. To get to the bottom of that mystery, which is what I try to do in the book, one must sift through the gospel stories to analyze their claims about Jesus in light of the historical facts we know about the time and world in which Jesus lived. But the more I read the Bible – especially in college, where I began my formal study of the New Testament – the more I uncovered a wide chasm between the Jesus of history and the Jesus I learned about in church. But the irony is that once I detached my academic study of Jesus from my faith in Christ, I became an even more fervent follower of Jesus of Nazareth. So in a way, this book is my attempt to spread the good news of Jesus the man with the same passion that I once applied to spreading the good news of Jesus the Christ. The key to understanding who Jesus was and what Jesus meant lies in understanding the times in which he lived. Aslan, who authored the much acclaimed No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, offers a compelling argument for a fresh look at the Nazarene, focusing on how Jesus the man evolved into Jesus the Christ. Approaching the subject from a purely academic perspective, the author parts an important curtain that has long hidden from view the man Jesus, who is every bit as compelling, charismatic, and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ. Carefully comparing extra-biblical historical records with the New Testament accounts, Aslan develops a convincing and coherent story of how the Christian church, and in particular Paul, reshaped Christianity's essence, obscuring the very real man who was Jesus of Nazareth.

By renovating homes in Waco, Texas, and changing lives in such a winsome and engaging way, Chip and Joanna have become more than just the stars of Fixer Upper , they have become America’s new best friends. Even back then Chip was a serial entrepreneur who, among other things, ran a lawn care company, sold fireworks, and flipped houses. The time Chip ran to the grocery store and forgot to take their new, sleeping baby Joanna’s agonizing decision to close her dream business to focus on raising their children When Chip buys a houseboat, sight-unseen, and it turns out to be a leaky wreck Joanna’s breakthrough moment of discovering the secret to creating a beautiful home Harrowing stories of the financial ups and downs as an entrepreneurial couple Memories and photos from Chip and Jo’s wedding The significance of the word magnolia and why it permeates everything they do The way the couple pays the popularity of Fixer Upper forward, sharing the success with others, and bolstering the city of Waco along the way. CHIP AND JOANNA GAINES are the founders of Magnolia Homes, Magnolia Market, and Magnolia Realty in Waco, Texas.