Pope John XXIII: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives)
The punchy Penguin Lives series is the best thing to hit  popular biography in some time, and Thomas Cahill is just the fun and  erudite guy to Penguinize Pope John XXIII. He captures both the  irresistible character of Angelo "Little Angel" Giuseppe Roncalli, a  peasant born in backwards Bergamo, and his place in world and church  history. In fact, Cahill shows, as John XXIII, Angelo brought the  church into the modern world in the 1960s, upsetting the poisoned apple  cart of his nefarious predecessor, Pius X, whom Cahill convincingly  likens to a Joe McCarthy with the private meanness of Nixon. John XXIII  anticipated liberation theology by seven decades, reached out to Protestants and even non-Christians, and saved thousands of Jews  from Hitler by wily machinations Cahill aptly compares to Paul's  epistle to Philemon. (Cahill says it's unfair to brand Angelo's  immediate predecessor, Pius XII, asHitler's Pope--though  he was a "moral pygmy" next to the giant John XXIII.) Cahill gives a  quickie history of the Papacy that generations of cramming history  students will thank God for, and includes just enough about Pope John's  irreverent wit and way of life--the La Grenouille chef, the Jackie  Kennedy friendship, the possibly apocryphal quip to a buxom woman  wearing a crucifix ("What a Golgotha!"). An exemplary brief bio of an  exemplary man.--Tim Appelo