Religion & Spirituality

Michael Kranish and Scott Helman's biography of Mitt Romney — The Real Romney — is now out in paperback with a new afterword. The authors discuss Romney's shift to the right, his faith and his recent comment that no one's ever asked to see his birth certificate.

The author's What Happened to Sophie Wilder features a convert to Catholicism and another character who struggles to understand her faith. Beta talks about his Catholic upbringing, iron's place in fiction and literature's therapeutic aspects.

The Vatican recently announced that it would completely make over the Leadership Conference of Women Religious because of its "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." Sister Pat Farrell, who heads the organization, says many of the charges are unsubstantiated.

In his new memoir, David McGlynn describes how his teenage years were disrupted by violence. McAllen was a swimmer who turned to evangelical Christianity in college. A Door in the Ocean is a compelling coming-of-age story marked by random tragedy and biblical tracts, church coffee and chlorine.

The evangelical radio host recently made national news for leading an attack against Mitt Romney's openly gay national security spokesman, who later resigned. But Fischer's viewpoints on abortion, gay marriage, education and taxes have been influencing his listeners long before this.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was once the lead cleric associated with the proposed Islamic community center some critics called the "ground zero mosque." In his new book, Moving the Mountain, Rauf calls for moderate Muslims to step up and marginalize the voices of extremists.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times columnist's new memoir explores her past, present and future — her relationships with her parents and children, her faith, her career and her feelings about herself over the past five decades.

Anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann studies the personal relationships evangelicals develop with God. In her book When God Talks Back, she explains how relationships with God are often cemented through the power of prayer.

Bessie and Boris Thomashefsky were mega-stars in the Yiddish theater world. Their story is told in a new documentary, written and conducted by heir grandson, Michael Tilson Thomas. He also serves as music director of San Francisco Symphony and artistic director of the New World Symphony.

Historian Andrew Preston says questions in an undergraduate class her was teaching at the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq spurred the research for his new book, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith. "Once I started looking for religion [in U.S. foreign policy], it was everywhere," he says.

Princeton religious scholar Elaine Pagels puts the New Testament's last book in historical context.

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander writes about his own faith — and what it means to be Jewish — in stories that explore religious tension, Israeli-American relations and the Holocaust.

The Inquisition revolutionized record-keeping and surveillance techniques that are still used today, says Cullen Murphy. His new book God's Jury draws parallels between some of the interrogation techniques used in previous centuries with the ones used today.

Longtime Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman start their biography of Mitt Romney by examining his ancestors, many of whom played crucial roles in the development of the Mormon faith. The Real Romney also examines the candidate's political beliefs and his career in private equity.

Ayad Akhtar's debut novel, American Dervish, tells the story of a Pakistani-American boy in Milwaukee coming to terms with his religion and identity. Akbar drew on his own experiences exploring the Muslim faith as a teenager growing up in Wisconsin.

Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy takes on genocide, identity politics and Anne frank (now elderly and squatting in a farmhouse in upstate New York) with grim humor and daring irreverence.

The recent film portrays former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as a man who had to keep his sexual orientation a secret — while collecting other people's secrets to use against them. Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black explains how he researched the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio.

The actor plays a righteous federal agent who succumbs to all sorts of temptations on the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire. To build the character of Nelson Van Alden, he says, he worked out an elaborate back story about the agent's childhood.