Ann Bezzerides' Top Picks

Allen, Pauline, and Wendy Mayer. John Chrysostom, Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 1999.

Want to read some great sermons of one of the greatest preachers in the history of the Church? Interested in knowing more about St John Chrysostom? In the first half of this book, Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, two Australian scholars of St John Chrysostom, write about St John's life and times and role as a pastor. In the second half, Allen and Mayer offer a recent translation of a great collection of St John Chrysostom's incredible homilies.

Erickson, John H. Orthodox Christians in America, Religion in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Interested in the history of Orthodox Christians in America? Oxford University Press has a series on Religion in American life written specifically for high school students. The author is John Erickson, Dean of St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, and the text includes good inserts such as St Innocent's instructions to missionaries in Alaska.

Koulomzin, Sophie. Many Worlds: A Russian Life. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980.

This book is a beautiful autobiography of an Orthodox Christian woman who escaped Bolshevik Russia as a teenager; was a part of vibrant Orthodox Christian student movements in Germany, Estonia, and Paris; studied theology in the United States at the age of 21; had a full-time ministry job in Paris in her twenties; was married, had four children, and survived World War Two in France in her thirties; and later immigrated to the United States where she was the first professor of Religious Education at St Vladimir's Seminary.