Inspired Lives: Exploring the Role of Faith and Spirituality in the Lives of Extraordinary People

Inspired: The Breath of God, by Joanna Laufer and Kenneth S. Lewis, reads like a group-therapy session for geniuses. It's a collection of ruminations by people like Desmond Tutu, Wynton Marsalis, Alan Dershowitz, John Polkinghorne, Ang Lee, and Kathleen Norris, on the presence of the Holy Spirit in their life and work. Like a group-therapy discussion, the book's organization is scattershot and sloppy, but most of its sentences are sharp. Don't read this one straight through: keep it by your bedside for a month, and read the pages at random. You'll learn a huge amount about how God is working in the lives of some people whose lives seem to be working extremely well. --Michael Joseph Gross