Harvard Diary: Reflections on the Sacred and the Secular (1)

By Robert Coles

Book Overview

Essays discuss Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, Thomas Merton, Reinhold Neibuhr, William Carlos Williams, Tolstoy, women's liberation, homosexuality, sin, the spiritual life of children, suffering and faith.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0824508858
• ISBN13: 9780824508852
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Crossroad Pub Co
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

There is Balm in Gilead!

I first learned about Robert Coles through my interest in Dorothy Day, the legendary co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Coles himself is a legend, albiet, a still living one. I am disappointed that Harvard Diary and its sequel, Harvard Diary II, are out of print. I stumbled across these book recently by accident. I still can't figure out the reason behind the madness of the Dewey decimil system. The library had these books in the philosophy section. But, that's just as well. Maybe someone like me will pick them up by accident and discover what a refreshing voice Coles is. Coles is a world-renowned psychiatrist (he would hate me saying this) and a prize-winning author. What stands out most about Coles is his ability to recognize the central paradox of humanity. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, even if now fatally flawed. I won't go into detail about Harvard Diary. The other reviewers have done a better job than I could do. I would recommend that you check out Phillip Yancey's book SOUL SURVIVOR which contains an outstanding sketch on Coles life and work.

Beyond social science to people.

Robert Coles is the kind of guy who can get away with saying "Tolstoy knew the emotions of childhood better than Freud." One would think that would be comparing apples and oranges, or some other kind of fruit, but one of Coles' beliefs is that life is one, and the borders of "social science" and human experience as narrated by the great thinkers of the past, not only ought to be transcended, but are pretty much meaningless anyway. Coles can say that because he is both a professor at Harvard University, and the author of a Pulitzer Prize - winning series on the spiritual life of children. His life consists of what he once called a "return to the Sermon on the Mount." This book consists mostly of reflections on people Coles admires, whom he discusses in one of his classes at Harvard. Favorites he features here include people like Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Conner, George Orwell, of course Tolstoy, those who work among the poor, and the some of the poor themselves, whose comments he reports a few paragraphs at a time, and are as interesting as anything by his more famous heroes. He writes from a viewpoint that he calls "liberal," but I was glad to find that didn't seem to take anything off the orthodoxy of his Christian faith. A thoughtful and challenging, but readable, book. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man