Does the business of daily living distance us from life's mysteries? Do most Americans value spiritual thinking more as a hobby than as an all-encompassing approach to life? Will the concept of the soul be defunct after the next few generations? Child psychiatrist and best-selling author Robert Coles offers a profound meditation on how secular culture has settled into the hearts and minds of Americans. This book is a sweeping essay on the shift from...

Robert Coles, one of the most eminent child psychiatrists in the world, spent over a decade researching this book and its companion volume, The Moral Life of Children. Coles visits children all over the world, listening with willing ears, and he captures their thoughts and feelings with remarkable sympathy. As Coles demonstrates in this fascinating work, children learn much more than we think they do about political issues. While we have always taken...

Offers a portrait of Bruce Springsteen and the influence of his music on both the lives of ordinary Americans and on the American literary tradition, examining the meaning of his lyrics within a social, cultural, and philosophical context.

Robert Coles first met Dorothy Day when he worked in one of her Catholic worker soup kitchens. He remained close to this inspiring and controversial woman until her death in 1980. His book confronts candidly the central puzzles of her life.