Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt.

Since these are suggestions for summer, allow me to begin by recommending a group of small books, the sort that can be held between one thumb and four fingers. What's more, all can be finished in three hours or so without the impulse for twisting about on a beach towel, hammock, or lawn chair.

The first is a delightful, witty but sobering book by Robert Sullivan, titled The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of the City (Scribner, $23, 220 pp.). Only someone as sly and passionate as Sullivan could discover endless adventure in exploring the inaptly named "Meadowlands," a euphemism for the swampland in northern New Jersey that is the fly-over entrance to Newark Airport. Most Jerseyites and New Yorkers prefer to ignore it (now that its formidable mosquitoes have been tamed) or to bypass it in silence via the N.J. Turnpike. But Sullivan, gifted with the historian's heart, can still see it as "America's first West" when it was alive with cedar trees - unlike its present state as a garbage dump for chemicals and assorted waste. His quest is both romantic and specific: Where is Jimmy Hoffa's body? Where are the glorious columns of the majestic Penn Station? What happened to those notorious pig farms in Secaucus? We readers canoe, yes, canoe along with him, and his discoveries are endlessly fascinating. A truly wonderful book.

A second is the equally delightful Memories 'by Sir George Solti (Knopf, $25.95, 258 pp.). Solti, on our shores, was most noted as the zestful conductor of the extraordinary (under his guidance) Chicago Symphony Orchestra, from 1969-91. We follow his life from his boyhood in Budapest, where as a young pianist he reveres his teacher Bela Bartok; his exile as a Jew in Zurich during World War II; and his later triumphs as a conductor in Munich, Frankfurt, Covent Garden, and then Chicago. He describes how, as a boy of fourteen, he was "hit by lightning" on hearing Erich Kleiber conduct Beethoven's Fifth and how his fate was sealed. That "lightning" of enthusiasm permeates his memoir, and his passion and dedication to his art will induce a reader to beg, borrow, or steal every Solti recording available. This is a book recounted with continental charm and modesty about the pleasures of addiction (to music).

The third is a book about America's national debt. No, wait! Come back here! It's not how it sounds! The author is John Steele Gordon, a regular columnist for American Heritage and author of the wonderful The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street (on the Erie Railroad Wars), a man who writes popular, lucid histories for noneconomists like you and me. His new book is called Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt (Walker, $21,214 pp.). It traces the history of our Government's financing in fat and lean times and offers an eminently clear overview of economic thought from Adam Smith through Keynesian to supply-side economics. Not only does the reader's admiration for the genius of Alexander Hamilton grow abounds (he was the only one of our noted Founding Fathers who had a clue about economics) but, equally so, the reader begins to appreciate keenly the relationship between our wars, depressions, trade and their financing. Meanwhile, it addresses problems we probably never consider, such as: Why is it that as much as $100 billion a year in would-be tax revenues is not collected? Or why is it that, today in Washington, D.C., tax lobbyists now number more than 125 per member of Congress? To find out, read Gordon, an informative, easy-to-read tale.

The fourth book is only slightly bigger; it can be held in one hand but, on occasion, one might need the other for balance. And for quick page-turning, because it's a page turner. This is an excellent biography by Terry Golway, a columnist for the New York Observer and (ahem) America magazine, of John Devoy who for over half a century was "Irish America's conscience, referee and, most of all, chief organizer." Its title (along with an arresting cover photo) captures the book's spirit: Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Irish Freedom (St. Martin's, $26.25, 371 pp.). Devoy's life (1842-1928) was a long one, and it not only paralleled in time but often inspired in action much of Ireland's sad to triumphant history in eighty-plus years. Golway's narrative pace is swift and sure, as is his ability to establish clearly both context and argument - a godsend for American readers whose heads can whirl on matters Irish, given their conflicting factions and historical passions. For lovers of biography, here is a terrific one.

The last three I recommend are very big books, not easy to pick up but even more difficult to put down. All three are perfect for the summer days when one is driven indoors by rain or heat or voracious mosquitoes. The first is a truly magnificent book, composed by our Catholic national treasure, Raymond E. Brown, S.S. Brown has published so many outstanding biblical studies that one hesitates to call his latest his crowning achievement. Yet, one can tentatively assert that his latest, An Introduction to the New Testament (Doubleday, $42.50, 878 pp.), will be his most indispensable for nonexperts in the New Testament. His erudition, lucid prose, fairness in judgment, and remarkable good sense are evident everywhere. Don't miss this book: It will enliven not only your intellectual but your spiritual life.

Next comes the mammoth (and handsome) The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, edited by Michael Glazier and Thomas Shelley (Glazier/Liturgical Press, $79.95, 1,567 pp.). This is one of those texts that is as tempting as a dish of peanuts; one casual munch and the reader is hooked for hours - and, better, nourished as well. The usual suspects bishops, writers, founders of congregations are all here, their lives recounted in graceful essays; but in addition, there are fascinating articles on what one would think would be subjects too difficult to capsulate intelligently: separate pieces on various Catholic "ethnics" (the Irish, Poles, Italians, Germans, et al.), and on the history of Catholicism in the various states. This volume is not only a welcome resource but an easy read, to boot.

Last is an even more handsome but lighter (in both senses) book, Eamon Duffy'S Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale, $30,326 pp.). Duffy, a fellow in history at Magdalen College, Cambridge, is the author of an outstanding history of the English Reformation, titled The Stripping of the Altars (Yale, 1992). Here, through telling anecdote and deft narrative, he traces papal history from its humble beginnings with Saint Peter, through the death of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages (of crusades and Inquisition), the Renaissance and Reformation, the post-Tridentine era up to today's end of the second millennium. Throughout, he manages to highlight the odd (for an outsider) confluence of spirituality, martial achievement, rank corruption, Christ-like sacrifice and reform, political hanky-panky - all together in glorious contradiction and still going strong. Few topics are as spiritually exhilarating and stupefying as the history of the church. A gripping story, a gripping book.

Don't leave home without these.

George W. Hunt, S.J., is editor of America.