Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign‐by‐Reign Record of the Papacy from St Peter to the Present (updated and expanded edition)

This attractive, lavishly illustrated account of the lives of the popes first appeared in 1997 when the late Ken Harrison reviewed it for Reference Reviews. The book, in the main, remains largely unchanged with the exception of an expanded entry for John Paul II and the appearance of an entry for Benedict XVI. The bibliography has been updated and the book's cover has changed.

The entry for John Paul II in this new edition reads quite considerably differently from any of the other entries in the book, which tend to have a more distanced, impersonal feel to them. It...