Lives of the Saints

I read a good book about St. Francis of Assisi recently (Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel Life by Lawrence S. Cunningham). Best of all, it was short -- less than 200 pages. Despite its brevity, it included the pertinent historical facts and some interesting theology. If only all authors could achieve such economy! You can read an interesting book review of it here.
Also to be filed under saints: The New Yorker has a fascinating article about Mary Magdalene and her development over 2,000 years of Christian history. For example, there is no evidence in the Bible that she was a prostitute. You can read the article through this link for awhile.
Interesting excerpt:

Today, with so many Biblical literalists around, we have to fuss about what Scripture actually says, but in the early centuries after Christ’s death such questions were less important, because most people couldn’t read. The four Gospels, for the most part, are collections of oral traditions. Once they were written down, they served as a guide for preaching, but only as a guide. Preachers embroidered upon them freely, and artists—indeed, everyone—made their own adjustments. The English scholar Marina Warner makes this point in her book on the Virgin Mary, “Alone of All Her Sex” (1976). As Warner shows, many of the details of the Nativity so familiar to us from paintings and hymns and school pageants—“the hay and the snow and the smell of animals’ warm bodies”—are not in the New Testament. People made them up; they wanted a better story. Likewise, they made up a better Mary Magdalene.