We've just posted our December 18 issue to the website, featuring Albert Hakim's look at the church's historically unkind teachings about hell and the theologians—from Origen to Küng—who defied them with arguments for universal salvation, and Michael Higgins's inspiring profile of Jean Vanier, whose adult life spent immersed in the lives of the disabled and the readings of spiritual masters (many familiar to Commonweal readers) offers a profound witness to community and service in a time of "throwaway culture."

Among the highlights in Books: Leslie Woodcock Tentler reviews Once in a Great City, David Maraniss's new history of eighteen "golden" months in Detroit, from the fall of 1962 until spring 1964 in what might, for non-Detroiters, be "excessive detail"; Don Wycliff reviews Ta-Nahisi Coates's autobiographical "interpretation of race in America today," Between the World and Me as it compares to work by James Baldwin; and Bethe Dufresne reviews Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, which she deems "a lesser literary literary work than its predecessor" despite being "more forthright in facing racism."

Other highlights include Rita Ferrone's exegesis of the perfect (and most neglected) gospel reading for Christmas, Edward Dupuy's reflection on Walker Percy and the modern problem of individual (and by extension global) "devaluation," poetry from Lou Ella Hickman and Michael Cadnum, and more.

Find the full table of contents here.