Dorothy Day, founder of the radical Catholic Worker movement died in 1980. Recently she has been proposed for canonization. A new collection of her letters sheds light on her early life, particularly the love affair that helped prompt her conversion.

Generally speaking, there is not much to...

I met Dorothy Day in the fall of 1975 when I was nineteen. I had taken leave from college and made my way to the Catholic Worker headquarters in New York City, drawn by a number of motivations. I was anxious to learn something directly about life, apart...

Henri Nouwen worked with many editors in his life. As it turned out, I was the last. I would not have foreseen this, 10 years before, when I first brought him the news that I had been offered a job at Orbis Books.

"Well," he said, "if...

Many people around the world regard my father, Daniel Ellsberg, as a hero. Over the last 40 years he has been a visible and outspoken champion for the cause of peace and social change. But he is particularly known for a singular act of courage. In 1969 he photocopied a...