In 1960, at age 26, Michael Novak moved into a Manhattan apartment swarming with cockroaches. After 12 years of preparing for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he had abandoned that mission and would devote himself to writing—about exactly what, he wasn’t sure. He realized, as he noted later, “there was no way to know how deep my talent ran.”It ran deep enough for him to write more than 50 books, including the acclaimed “Spirit...

Source: Wall Street Journal February 24, 2017 15:00 UTC