For For readers who want Merton on race and nonviolence in the 1960s; not a book on prayer, though prayer underlies it.
Should I read this?
For the general reader
3 of 5worth your time
For the researcher
4 of 5important
Difficulty
3 of 5demanding
Essays on race in America, the Christian in the world and nonviolence, with letters of the period; written during the civil rights movement.
How it proceeds
Philosophic2 of 5
Scriptural1 of 5
Experiential1 of 5
Sociological5 of 5
Historical3 of 5
Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.
A book of essays published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York in 1964. Its opening section, "Black Revolution", addresses the civil rights movement and white liberal complacency (an earlier version appeared in French as La révolution noire); further sections treat the Christian's place in a world of violence and the question of peace, and the book closes with a selection of his letters. It is one of the main documents of the social Merton of the 1960s.