Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was a seminal figure of twentieth-century American Christianity. Among his many books are his best-selling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) and the modern spiritual classic New Seeds of Contemplation (1961).
Patrick F. O’Connell, a founding member of the International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS) is coauthor of The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia (2002). He has edited twelve previous volumes of Thomas Merton’s writings, including Thomas Merton: Selected Essays (2013) and Cistercian Fathers and Forefathers (2018).