The HarperCollins Books of Prayers.

by Robert Van De Weyer, HarperCollins, $25, 414 pp.

I am very partial to anthologies of prayers, both because they are welcome invitations to browse and because they are an excellent source for theological meditation. Van de Weyer's collection (he is an Anglican priest at Little Gidding, a place made famous in Eliot's Four Quartets), drawn from the world's religions, is not organized into categories. In that sense it differs from George Appleton's The Oxford Book of Prayers and Tony Castle's The New Book of Christian Prayers. Van de Weyer settles for an alphabetical order (Adam of Saint Victor to Zoroaster), using, as his criterion of selection, an emphasis on prayers of devotion in which persons bring their own needs to God in personal words. At the end of the book there is a rather thorough topical index for those looking for prayers for specific times or themes.

I very much like the range of people represented in this volume, the crispness of presentation (each person gets a brief biographical introduction), and the handsome typography. This well-produced book would make an excellent gift purchase for a friend or might well serve as a vademecum for personal devotion.