Reviews

Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel

jmr_books's review

4.0

Well worth the months it took me to read.

adamrshields's review against another edition

4.0

Short Review: I listened to the abridged audiobook, which I think was probably a good idea because I would have never made time to get through a 1000 page biography. John Paul II is certainly an interesting person, but the I think the abridgment focused too much on the political issues and less on his direction of the Catholic church. Weigel is certainly a fan, and while he had great access to the Pope to write this, I would want another biography to balance him out. This was also written before John Paul II's death, so it does not really have a good overview of his life and legacy that you would have if it were written now nearly a decade later.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/witness-to-hope/

mikegprint's review

adventurous challenging hopeful inspiring medium-paced

5.0

geek1352's review

This book was very thorough. I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially the first part where we get to see his life prior to becoming the Pope. His courage and tenacity were inspiring to read about. His life was vastly different and much more difficult than I might have imagined.

The latter part of the book got long and boring in parts. I think this was because I had a good sense by then what the Pope would do, so it lost some of the tension. It could have been the author or just history repeating itself, but it seemed any section that concluded nobody was expecting a trip to go well was immediately followed by a section detailing how amazing a visit went and how many people attended. On the upside, I learned a lot more about various countries' histories than I had known before reading.