Pope John Paul II: The Biography

The late Tad Szulc was a foreign and Washington correspondent for The New York Times who covered major news stories on four continents and was the author of eighteen books, including the landmark Fidel, a biography of Castro; Then and Now: How the World Has Changed Since World War II; and The Illusion of Peace, all of which have won Overseas Press Club Awards for the Best Book on Foreign Affairs. He was Knight of the French Order of the Legion of Honor and a recipient of Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Gold Medal. He died in 2001.

Born in 1920, Karol Wojtyla worked in factories and quarries while secretly studying for the priesthood in his native Poland during WWII. Historian Szulc renders a secular approach to the Pontiff's life. The solid, dry biography includes brief histories of both the Roman Catholic Church and the twentieth century. The narration is appropriately humble. Sommer's unremarkable voice and pacing support Szulc's objectivity. The production suffers from uneven recording levels on the first three sides. This problem becomes less evident on later tapes. D.W.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine