Unlike any other pope, John Paul II has reached out, creating dialogue or creating uproar, but always striving to unite the human community. Drawing on years of personal interaction with the Pope, and on his unique understanding of the intersection of religion and politics, Flynn, with co-authors Robin Moore and Jim Vrabel, shows how John Paul II changed the papacy, perhaps forever.

Although Boston today is a vibrant and thriving city, it was anything but that in the years following World War II. By 1950 it had lost a quarter of its tax base over the previous twenty-five years, and during the 1950s it would lose residents faster than any other major city in the country. Credit for the city's turnaround since that time is often given to a select group of people, all of them men, all of them white, and most of them well off. In fact, a large group of community activists, many of them women, people of color, and not very well off, were also responsible for creating the...