Book Review: Nancy Klein Maguire, An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the western World’s Most Austere Monastic Order (Public Affairs, 2007)
Document Type
Book Review
Department
Religion (CGU)
Publication Date
2008
Disciplines
European History | History of Religion | History of Religions of Western Origin | Religion
Abstract
If books are to be judged by their power to transport the reader into other worlds and times, then this is a very good book, well worth the attention of serious scholars of many different interests and backgrounds. It is a collection of narratives about five men whose lives intersected briefly in the early to mid- 1960s in connection with the environment that is poignantly called “the Western world’s most austere monastic order.” The book is fascinating and—in the way that powerful books should be—somewhat disturbing reading. It is disturbing in terms of what it reveals about the monastic life, about the Carthusian order, and about the particular community located at Parkminster in England in the 1960s.
Rights Information
©2008 Wiley-Blackwell
Terms of Use & License Information
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6563.2008.00227_59.x
Recommended Citation
Wimbush, V. L. (2008), An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order – By Karen Klein Maguire. Historian, 70: 837–838. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.2008.00227_59.x
