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"Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible." Thus begins the first encyclical of the first pope from the United States, written during the country's 250th anniversary and addressing a topic - artificial intelligence - whose industry is centered in the United States. Yet Pope Leo's message is for everyone of good will throughout the world, to remind them of the principles of Catholic social teaching, the grandeur of being human, and the dignity of work as signposts in navigating the challenges and opportunities of an economy shaped by AI. This handsome paperback version from The Catholic University of America Press, the publishers of the pope's doctoral thesis, will spark reflection and action upon Pope Leo's words.

William of Auvergne was a long-reigning bishop of Paris (1228-1249) with notable political influence, wide intellectual interests, and an appetite for ideological contest. William’s On Laws (De legibus) is a major treatise on the Law of Moses, its nature and purpose in ancient Judaism and contemporary Christianity. William’s fundamental objective in the work is to show the abiding power of the Law, including its ritual and other seemingly non-moral commands, as a counterforce to perennially recurring idolatries. In this, he shows his debt to, but also his distance from, Maimonides, whose Guide of the Perplexed had, in William’s time, only recently appeared (c. 1223) in a partial Latin translation. Along the way, On Laws includes lengthy sections on non-literal biblical interpretation and its abuses; on the life of Muhammad and the law of Islam; and on contemporary superstition, sorcery, and paganism. On Laws is a work of broad significance for the cultural history of thirteenth-century Europe, including the histories of medieval Jewish-Christian relations, Christian-Muslim relations, heresy, paganism, and witchcraft, as well as the histories, more broadly, of biblical interpretation, philosophy, natural science, and magic. A product of the academic world of early thirteenth-century Paris, On Laws is not a lovely or literary work, but neither is it technical, formulaic, or derivative. The book, like its author, cuts its own paths through the cultural thickets of the day. And by its relative intellectual informality, On Laws gives frequent, inadvertent insight into the intellectual, religious, and social experiences of thirteenth-century people. On Laws has never before been translated from Latin into any other language.