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Reviewed by TOM GALLAGHER

	COMRADES: A HISTORY OF WORLD COMMUNISM By Robert Service Harvard University Press, 592 pages, $35
	LENIN'S PRIVATE WAR: THE VOYAGE OF THE PHILOSOPHY STEAMER AND THE EXILE OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA By Lesley Chamberlain St. Martin's Press, 432 pages, $27.95

Two books provide a fascinating look back at an ideology and an era

Less than 20 years ago, governments calling themselves communist controlled one-third of the world’s surface. Cramming their story into a single volume is a difficult enough task, so the fact that Robert Service has also managed to include the lesser-known aspects of communism like the 1919 revolutions in Bavaria and Hungary and contemporary movements on the Indian sub-continent in his Comrades: A History of World Communism constitutes a major tour de force.

At the same time, we could also trace the arc of communism from dream to nightmare with just three names: Marx, Lenin and Stalin. Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist; Joseph Stalin a murderous dictator; but it is the man in the middle, Vladimir Lenin, who took communism from theory to practice, who remains the most enigmatic. In Lenin’s Private War: The Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, Lesley Chamberlain attempts to take his measure from a single, largely forgotten episode.

Reviewed by RACHELLE LINNER

A JESUIT OFF-BROADWAY: CENTER STAGE WITH JESUS, JUDAS, AND LIFE’S BIG QUESTIONS By James Martin Loyola Press, 272 pages, $22.95

Jesuit Fr. James Martin, an associate editor at America magazine, is a popular spiritual writer, the author of the award-winning My Life with the Saints. Fr. Martin’s conversational, engaging prose seems at first glance an unlikely vehicle for conveying theological ideas, yet this is precisely his gift as a writer.

These qualities are amply demonstrated in A Jesuit Off-Broadway, a narrative of Fr. Martin’s six-month involvement with the LAByrinth Theater Company’s production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.” The play is cast as a trial to “consider whether or not Judas deserved” his fate, a question the playwright first entertained as a third-grade parochial school student. He believed in a loving God, and the idea that God had consigned Judas to a place called hell “just stopped me in my tracks,” the playwright said.

It is hard to pick an 'appropriate' topic among the Forums.
I believe that there may be more than one appropriate forum. To begin with I chose Church Leadership. Other possible forums for my general topic could be Diocesan Life, Justice and Peace, Spirituality and Culture, and Everything Under the Sun. What is troubling is the 'news' of Fr. Marek Bozek. I sympathize with him and the parishioners of St. Stanislaus. The article in the February 22, 2008 National Cathiloc Reporter was an all inspiring story, well written and worth prayers from anyone and everyone. My most basic comment about the events that surround Fr.Bozek's supposedly deflocking can be anyone's nightmare, especially if one is Catholic. I think it is hard to imagine how life was in Poland during the earlt part of the 20th century, and post WWII leading up to the Communist control over one's spiritual and temporal life. There must be strong evidence for people of St. Stanislaus parish, and Fr. Bozek, to compare the old government of Poland to what the rule/magistratium of the Catholic Church. If only there was an univversal(ism) about governance in the church. One could also consider the horrors that has occured (and still is occuring) in Centeral and South America among the marginixed Catholic faithful. An option for the poor is one way to look at the story. The 'poor' being not only materialistically poor with the poorest living conditions like in Calcutta, but a spiritual poverty tht reaches far beyond, or inwardly a person's soul. I just wish and pray that the goverance of St. Stanislaus parish can be reconciled so that all parties concerned can have a mutual understanding and sharing of the gifts that of the people, rather than dismissing them from receiving the sacraments because of their "preception" of financial management. Being Christain and Catholic can be a "freeing" experience or an shackling experience.