Summer reading.

IT was already a bestseller before its appearance on bookstore shelves, but it would be a shame if Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 374 pp., $24.95) ended up like a Stephen Hawking tome--more bought than read, and gathering dust on the coffee table. Joseph Ratzinger's intellectual reputation is certainly intimidating, but his first book as Pope Benedict XVI is (for the most part) written in a clear, reader-friendly style: He has read Julicher and Schnackenburg, so we don't have to.

The book is an examination of Jesus's public ministry. (An anticipated second volume will tackle his birth and infancy, passion and resurrection.) The mission of Jesus's life, Ratzinger explains, is to reveal God to humanity: As God's Son, He shows us the face of God the Father, and brings mankind into closer relation with divine reality. The chapter on the Lord's Prayer stresses that the initiative in this drama comes from God's grace, not from man: "The Our Father does not project a human image onto heaven, but shows us from heaven--from Jesus--what we as human beings can and should be like."

The author displays his remarkable breadth of knowledge and sympathies, as he simultaneously engages with the details of modern scholarship and upholds in a convincing manner the basic reliability of the Bible.

* Anthony Esolen, an accomplished Dante translator, is also an incisive literary critic. In his generous new book, Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature (ISI, 350 pp., $28), he discusses great works from Shakespeare to Tolkien--and points out how the divine mysteries always end up being deeper than we think we know. The worldly-wise are confounded; strength is made perfect in weakness; eros becomes a vehicle of grace. "It is as Mauriac once said: We will be surprised to see not only the harlots and publicans enter before us, but even the persecutors and the atheists. Let us pray we will be in a position to enjoy the irony."

* Victor Canto is one of the most prominent expositors of supply-side economics. He is also a talented market-watcher; in his new book Cocktail Economics: Discovering Investment Truths from Everyday Conversations (Financial Times, 336 pp., $24.99), he provides readers with big-picture advice on how to reap higher-than-average investment returns by understanding economic cycles.

* In God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve, 288 pp., $24.99), Christopher Hitchens demonstrates, with his customary panache, that religion poisons everything. There's only one conclusion reasonable people can draw: From now on, we must put our trust in God alone.

* The Bad Catholic's Guide to Wine, Whiskey & Song: A Spirited Look at Catholic Life and Lore from Apocalypse to Zinfandel (Crossroad, 402 pp., $14.95) is even more fun than it sounds. One need not embrace the religious and political opinions of the authors--text, John Zmirak; recipes, Denise Matychowiak--to thoroughly enjoy this book. Among the potent insights: "Devout Guinness drinkers like to explain that food is empty calories--it gets you fat, but doesn't get you drunk." And: "If, as Walter Pater wrote, all art aspires to the condition of music"--here Zmirak adds, in a laconic footnote, "it doesn't"--"then all vodkas distill toward the flavor of moonshine."

* Historian Lee Edwards has assembled an impressive reading list of 101 volumes in Reading the Right Books: A Guide for the Intelligent Conservative (Heritage, 151 pp., $7). (Disclosure: I was on the editorial advisory board for this book.) From old classics like Witness and The Conservative Mind to recent blockbusters like David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed and Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, Edwards's list sets the table for an intellectual feast.

* Kudos to St. Augustine's Press and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project for their efforts to make the great philosopher-theologian's works more readily available. They have just released a new edition of his long-out-of-print The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity (140 pp., $24). In this welcome corrective to arid intellectualism, von Hildebrand reminds us that "it is the heart that experiences happiness, and not the intellect or the will," and that we should resist "the ostracism of the affective sphere by Greek philosophy."