Rev. James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, culture editor of America magazine, and author of numerous books, including My Life with the Saints, which Publishers Weekly named one of the best books of 2006. Father Martin is a frequent commentator in the national and international media, having appeared in such diverse outlets as The Colbert Report, Fresh Air, The O'Reilly Factor, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe, and on the History Channel, BBC, and Vatican Radio. Before entering the Jesuits in 1988 he graduated from the Wharton School of Business.

James Martin has led a thoroughly modern life: from a lukewarm childhood Catholicism, to the Wharton School of Business, to the executive fast track at General Electric, to the Jesuits, to a media career in Manhatten. But at every step along the way he has been accompanied by special friends--the saints of the Catholic Church. These holy men and women are not just historical figures to him. Martin's attachment to them is real and personal. The saints have guided him. He convincingly shows how the saints can be our friends too.

Martin's saintly friends come from the whole of Christian history--from St. Paul to John XXIII--and they include Therese of Lisieux, Joan of Arc, Ignatius Loyola and other beloved figures. They accompany the author on a pilgrimage that includes stops in a sunlit square of a French town, a quiet retreat house on a New England beach, the housing projects in inner-city Chicago, the sparwling slums of Nairobi, and a gorgeous Baroque church in Rome. As James Martin's inspiring, witty, and surprising account unfolds, we see how saints can help us to find our way in the world.