"Re-reading is one of life's joys," Anne Drury Hall reminds us. Not simply from the sweetness of remembering or because of the way a book can be like an old friend, but because returning to a great book is inseparable from the endeavor to succeed at being human. The "pull of something old and steady and reliable, the pull to rise to a higher plane" is an important aspect of this experience, where the reader truly "notices" and "connects" with the world and himself. This is why books are the cornerstones of education and the source of the power of concentration. 

  After leaving school and becoming lost in adulthood, can one return to these books and revive the quest to be great? For this is why we call such books "great". Yet as Hall says, "few people use the phrase 'great books' any more except ironically, because there is an odd view in the current intellectual fog that there is no such thing as 'greatness'". She is compelled, then, to reexamine the so-called great books and make the case for their eternal importance. It is a task that requires not only swimming against the disenchanted march of the post-modern reader into adulthood, but also asserting the unthinkable––namely, that great books were written by great men who achieved this status through their own labor and endurance. 
Hall reintroduces the reader to Plato, Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and Melville and hopes this will expose the fraud of most of contemporary literature, and encourage taste and stamina for the works that promise to exhilarate. And Hall argues well that the thrill of these books draws from one shared feature: "The heart of these books is the drama of choice." If Roger Scruton is famous for showing us that ideas have consequences, Hall provides the reader the vision of himself as standing on the brink and the urgency of taking life seriously again. For many this means taking books seriously again.

This book is an important companion to the works treated therein, for teachers and students alike. Both need encouragement in the laboring of instruction or reading the impressive classics. Particularly apt is Hall's treatment of the difficulty of teaching Shakespeare. For the not-so-recent university graduate, perhaps this book will bring him once again to wander where the Muses still haunt. Indeed, even the well-read will enjoy Hall's keen interpretation of the glory of these stories. This is a book written by a true teacher. 

This book rises out of Dr. Kevin Hart’s 2020 Aquinas Lecture at the University of Dallas. Contemplation and Kingdom seeks to retrieve aspects of Richard of St. Victor's treatment of contemplation, principally in De arca mystica, and does so by weighing Thomas Aquinas's reservations about this treatment in the Summa theologiæ. Is Aquinas right to object, as Augustine does in De Doctrina Christiana, that our contemplation should go directly to God and not be stalled in the consideration of the natural world? What relation is there between Jesus's preaching of the Kingdom and the contemplation of God? Is the contemplative life consistent with Jesus's injunction to love both God and neighbor? These are the principal questions considered in the book.

This book is vintage Hart, erudite, well written, a treat for a wide readership. It is an example of how theology ought to be done, with a clarity and depth unsurpassed in today’s scholarly world. Its blend of anglo-saxon elegance and continental insights will be praised in the Academy and outside. – Jean-Yves Lacoste, Clare Hall, Cambridge
In the light of great contemporary interest in contemplation, this brilliant and erudite work is a stunning example. The focus on Richard of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas is especially appropriate. Theologians and philosophers will be especially thankful for Kevin Hart’s work on the actuality of contemplation. – David Tracy, University of Chicago 

Kevin Hart holds the Edwin B. Kyle Chair of Christian Theology at the University of Virginia where he is also Courtesy Professor of English and Courtesy Professor of French. In 2020 he was awarded the Aquinas Medal by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. His 2020 Étienne Gilson Lectures, given at L'Institut Catholique de Paris, offer a fresh approach to the theology of the imago dei in Augustine. His 2020 Gifford Lectures, given at Glasgow University, examine various questions to do with the theology of contemplation and propose a new "hermeneutics of contemplation." His most recent scholarly publications include Kingdoms of God and Poetry and Revelation, and his most recent collections of poetry are Wild Track: New and Selected Poems and Barefoot.

China’s Quest for Liberty is a personal story of a young man fully engaged in understanding the world he was born into and working toward making that world into a better and freer place to life. It is about an unexpected journey a Chinese journalist has taken to pursue freedom, involving such diverse fields or disciplines as politics, business, humanities, science and technology, government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Some took place as daily life, and some occurred in detentions or disasters.

It is about a world whose dimensions have been basically obscured not only in China but also in the global public square, and walk with this young journalist, step by step, to find, paradoxically, the hope in the depth of hopelessness, the strength in acknowledging weakness, the change in substance by, among other things, keeping the form unchanged for at least a while, the youth in growing up despite growing old, the invisible in the visible, the imperishable in the perishable, the reality in the shadow of numerous fake realities, and the freedom gained not mainly through human efforts but as mercy and grace from the one who created humans and other beings.

As well as digging out the overlooked Christian background in the rise of the sanctity of human life, creative culture, constitutionalism, work as a vocation, modern management, servant leadership, and catchphrases like “the global village” and “The medium is the message”, the author tells of insider observations about the rise of Christianity in China generally and about Shouwang Church in particular. Through sharing these findings, this book aims to show how the one who made the universe rules the world and how this creator sets his creatures free by himself.

China’s Quest for Liberty is a fascinating work of nuance and surprise.