79 books like Paradiso

I first read this book in college, and it has powerfully shaped my philosophy of life. Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker, distinguished between “I-It” relationships, in which we use another person instrumentally, and “I-Thou” relationships, in which we encounter another face to face. He argues that personhood begins in the prenatal life of the child flowing to and from its mother, but ends in God where all parallel relations intersect.

As a lifelong cat lover, I’m especially fond of his idea that personhood is not limited by species. Buber recognized that we can authentically say “Thou” to a cat or even a tree. 

Charles Williams is one of my guilty pleasures. The most esoteric of the famous Inklings, he wrote supernatural thrillers in which marvels take place in the midst of present-day London. This book, his last and, in my view, his best novel, is set near the end of WW II.

Two young women, killed instantly when a plane crashes onto them, find that they must work out their salvation—or its opposite—in a world where the living and the newly dead can still interact. The gestures of ordinary friendship and everyday cruelty turn out to have eternal stakes in this eerie, unforgettable novel, which I’ve reread more times than I can count. 

I was excited to discover that coinherence, the medieval Christian idea of personhood I explore, has a close parallel to the African concept of Ubuntu. A Zulu word for “humanity,” Ubuntu offers a refreshing corrective to the excessive individualism of the West. In Ubuntu the source of identity is not individuality, but community; not “I think, therefore I am,” but “we are, therefore I am.”

Michael Battle, a disciple of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, explores what an Ubuntu notion of personhood means for everything from peacemaking to the struggle against racism and apartheid. Yes, philosophical ideas can have real-world consequences!

My favorite anthropologist, Tanya Luhrmann, always has fascinating insights about how people come to believe what they believe. In this book, she argues that today’s Christian converts—much like the medieval saints I write about—must learn the art of prayer through intentional training.

We often think of praying as a solitary pursuit, but she demonstrates that this spiritual discipline can only be taught and learned in community. Luhrmann uses both in-depth interviews and ingenious scientific experiments to explore how this happens. 

I love being a historian of the early and central Middle Ages. This was a period in which the religious and political conflicts of the later Middle Ages were not yet foregone conclusions, although the faultlines of future conflicts were being laid.

The late thirteenth century, by contrast, was a time of multiple contests on many fronts: the European crusading project continued, the fallout of the conflict between Frederick II and the papacy was still roiling, and the newly powerful kings of European states were competing for influence.

Steven Runciman’s book captures the ferment of this time by focusing on an uprising against Sicily’s French rulers. Although the book was published many years ago, it has never really been matched for its propulsive storytelling and ability to highlight the continuing importance of Sicily as a focal point of broader developments in the Mediterranean.

I’m a giant nerd for fantasy, and my man Dante pretty much invented it with this book. Basically, every depiction of Hell you have ever seen in a book or on a movie screen? Yeah, Dante did that.

But it’s not just coming to grips with the, frankly iconic, nine circles of hell that make me love it; it’s the fact that Dante is also this very clearly petty, grudge-holding, self-absorbed regular guy who just so happens also to have an incredible imagination.

Yes, I love it because it’s a disturbing and beautiful revery about mislead lives, but it’s also a window into the soul of a medieval man. Come for the philosophical quandaries; stay for the demons and the ironic punishments. I re-read this constantly.

Just as Dante needed good guides on his epic journey through the afterlife, so contemporary readers typically need reliable companions on their own journeys into Dante’s poem. The best thing, I find, is to read Dante with, and alongside, his commentators. An ideal way to do this is through the invaluable online Dartmouth Dante Project and Dante Lab, which provide the entire texts of more than 75 of these commentaries in a customisable digital workspace. But if you want a book to hand, The Cambridge Companion to Dante’s ‘Commedia’ provides a really helpful overview of Dante’s masterpiece and its core narrative, linguistic, cultural, and doctrinal features, as well as useful introductions to the poem’s composition and reception. 

First I want to say how much I love The Divine Comedy Dante’s Inferno and this graphic novel adaptation by Seymour Chwast is a wonderful version of the tale. If you don’t already know the story I highly suggest you read it in its original text but also be sure to grab this copy as it will really bring the levels of hell to a more comical light. I particularly love the black and white bold art style and humor brought to life here. 

Howard Moss brings a poet’s grasp of the ineffable to this enchanting study of Proust. His commentaries on the novelist’s use of psychology and philosophy, on habit and memory, are remarkable contributions to our understanding. He writes about In Search of Lost Time as “a total vision, not relying on any system outside itself for support. It is as if Dante had set out to write The Divine Comedy using only the facts of his own existence, without any reference to Christianity.” Moss was poetry editor at The New Yorker for almost forty years. A small gem.

When I was interviewing for a position at Notre Dame, the campus museum had an exhibit of illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, which reinforced to me the fascination of Dante. 

When I began teaching the work a few years later, my students were engrossed by its riveting portrayals of moral ugliness. They were also amazed that Dante places even popes in hell. The work has so inspired my students that one of them submitted her final paper in terza rima, the form Dante uses, and another reflected on where precisely in hell she might belong.

This beautifully translated bilingual edition contains extensive, helpful commentary.