Seldom can one predict that a book will have an effect on history, but this is such a work. Merton's many biographers and the American press now say unanimously that he died from accidental electrocution. From a careful examination of the official record, including crime scene photographs that the authors have found that the investigating police in Thailand never saw, and from reading the letters of witnesses, they have discovered that the accidental electrocution conclusion is totally false. The widely repeated story that Merton had taken a shower and was therefore wet when he touched a lethal faulty fan was made up several years after the event and is completely contradicted by the evidence. Hugh Turley and David Martin identify four individuals as the primary promoters of the false accidental electrocution narrative. Another person, they show, should have been treated as a murder suspect. The most likely suspect in plotting Merton's murder, a man who was a much stronger force for peace than most people realize, they identify as the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States government. Thomas Merton was the most important Roman Catholic spiritual and anti-warfare-state writer of the 20th century. To date, he has been the subject of 28 biographies and numerous other books. Remarkably, up to now no one has looked critically at the mysterious circumstances surrounding his sudden death in Thailand. From its publication date in the 50th anniversary of his death, into the foreseeable future, this carefully researched work will be the definitive, authoritative book on how Thomas Merton died.

In 1969, one year after Thomas Merton's tragic (and suspicious) death, John Howard Griffin was invited to write a biography of America's most famous monk, a monk who strangely had become a best-selling theologian. The result was Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton (1983). Both Merton and Griffin were converts to Catholicism, and they had become fast friends during Griffin's occasional retreats to the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani where Merton was cloistered. As Robert Bonazzi writes in his Foreword, "With natural humility and intense spirituality, they taught each other by example and silence." Merton and Griffin were both photographers as well as writers. Griffin wrote about Merton's painting and photography in A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World of Thomas Merton (1970). They also shared a fascination with the French theologian Jacques Maritain, as well as French modernists Pierre Reverdy, George Braque, and Albert Camus. Griffin fell ill before he could finish his biography of Merton, and the mantle of official biographer passed to Michael Mott, author of The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, an essential compendium of the monk's life. Yet Follow the Ecstasy gets closer to the man--a portrait made by one who shared not only personal histories and interests with Merton, but an "intuitive perspective of solitude."

This volume is a stimulating series of spiritual reflections which will prove helpful for all struggling to find the meaning of human existence and to live the richest, fullest and noblest life. --Chicago Tribune

This paperbook collection of his prose writings reveals the extent to which Thomas Merton moved from the other-worldly devotion of his earlier work to a direct, deeply engaged, often militant concern with the critical situation of man in the world.

One man's search to find his role in the world is revealed in the writer's portrait of his youthful political activism and entry into a Trappist monastery

For forty years, James Finley’s Merton's Palace of Nowhere has been the standard text for exploring, reflecting on, and understanding the rich vein of Thomas Merton's thought. Spiritual identity is the quest to know who we are, to find meaning, to overcome that sense of “Is this all there is?” Merton’s message cuts to the heart of this universal quest, and Finley illuminates that message as no one else can. As a young man of eighteen, Finley left home for an unlikely destination: the Abbey of Gethsemani, where Thomas Merton lived as a contemplative. Finley stayed at the monastery for six maturing years and later wrote this Merton’s Palace of Nowhere in order to share a taste of what he had learned on his spiritual journey under the guidance of one of the great religious figures of our time. At the heart of the quest for spiritual identity are Merton's illuminating insights—leading from an awareness of the false and illusory self to a realization of the true self. Dog-eared, tattered, underlined copies of this book are found on the bookshelves of retreat centers, parish libraries, and the homes of spiritual seekers everywhere. This anniversary edition brings a classic to a new generation and includes a new preface by Finley.

"Spirituality & Practice 2016 Award Winner." Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) was a complex man. Born into French aristocracy, he floundered as a military officer, but rediscovered his Catholic heritage and eventually lived voluntarily as an impoverished priest/hermit in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. Foucauld wanted to emulate the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth and in doing so, left a spiritual legacy that attracted such figures as Dorothy Day and author, poet, and spiritual director Bonnie Thurston. Published in celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Charles de Foucauld’s death on December 1, 1916, Hidden in God highlights the profound conversion that led Foucauld to embrace the life of a hermit in the Sahara, where he was eventually murdered by a band of marauders. Foucauld’s legacy is an enduring spiritual vision: believe in God, you should live for God and make him your reason for living. Drawing from his letters and journals, Bonnie Thurston explores how the hidden life of Nazareth brings the grace of great closeness to Jesus; the gift of the desert is the grace of complete dependence on God; and the grace of public life is the practice of charity and self-giving. Thurston adeptly demonstrates how these three locations are metaphors for states of spiritual life and ministry and how each one brings both a challenge and a danger. Words of wisdom from Foucauld, as well as questions to ponder and biblical texts to explore conclude each chapter. Thurston shares how she became enamored with Foucauld for the passionate way he lived his ideals without regard for recognition or success. “I’ve fallen in love with a dead Frenchman who was a hermit,” she admitted to a friend. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, also was attracted to Foucauld’s desert spirituality and wrote to Thomas Merton and others about Foucauld’s spiritual influence.