The Prophets, A J Heschel.

I've spent a while in good company today. This is one of very few of my books that I think irreplaceable.

It's a First Edition, bought in Kiefer's Book Store in Chicago, in 1962. The front edges are untrimmed, and the binding and boards, the paper and fonts result in a book it's a delight to handle and read.

 

It also happens to be the magnum opus of my favourite Jewish writer, exploring the experience of the Hebrew Prophets in a book alight with passion, many passages reading like prose poems, freighted with immense learning and profound sympathy for his subject - Jewish prophetic faith as a conduit of Divine pathos, faithfulness and mercy.

 

I love this book as an object, for its subject, and for the mind and soul of its author.