Saxum—the Latin word means rock—is the nickname that St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, bestowed on Alvaro del Portillo. Don Alvaro, as he came to be known, was for many years the founder’s closest associate as well as his successor and first Prelate of Opus Dei after it became a personal prelature—a foundational rock for this dynamic international Catholic group devoted to promoting sanctity in ordinary life. Written in anticipation of Bishop del Portillo’s September 2014 beatification—his official recognition by the Church as “blessed” and a stage on the way to his possible canonization as a saint—the book is a fact-filled biography set against the background of historic events like the Spanish Civil War and Vatican Council II. It depicts a person of powerful integrity and conviction who set aside a promising engineering career to follow the vision embodied in Opus Dei. Don Alvaro emerges in these pages as a tower of strength, reliability, and good humor in the face of a host of threats and challenges that might well have defeated a lesser man. John Coverdale, an attorney and historian, is the author of two other books detailing the early days of Opus Dei—Uncommon Faith, about St. Josemaría and his companions during and shortly after the civil war in Spain, and Putting Down Roots, about Father Joseph Muzquiz, along with Alvaro del Portillo one of Opus Dei’s first priests, who played a key role in introducing it in the United States.

Bennu, named for the ancient Egyptian phoenix, was the chosen destination of OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s premier mission of asteroid exploration, launched in 2016. Study of the asteroid is important in safeguarding the future of planet Earth, but Bennu is also a time capsule from the dawn of our Solar System, holding secrets over four-and-a-half billion years old about the origin of life and Earth as a habitable planet. In 2020 the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Bennu and collected pristine asteroid material for delivery to Earth in September 2023. Scientific studies of the samples, along with data collected during the rendezvous, promise to help find answers to some of humanity’s deepest questions: Where did we come from? What is our destiny in space? This book, the world’s first complete (and stereoscopic) atlas of an asteroid, is the result of a unique collaboration between OSIRIS-REx mission leader Dante Lauretta and Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company. Lauretta’s colleagues include Carina Bennett, Kenneth Coles, and Cat Wolner, as well as Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who became part of the ultimately successful effort to find a safe landing site for sampling. The text details the data collected by the mission so far, and the stereo images have been meticulously created by Manzoni and May from original images collected by the OSIRIS-REx cameras.