Books written by Thomas Merton

Selected Poems

Selected by Mark Van Doren and James Laughlin, this slim volume is now available again as a wonderful showcase of Thomas Merton's splendid poetry.
The Seven Storey Mountain

A celebration of Merton's spiritual autobiography is accompanied by an introduction from the editor and a note from Merton's biographer The Seven Storey Mountain is one of the most famous books ever written about a man's search for faith ...
The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey

With the election of a new Abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton enters a period of unprecedented freedom, culminating in the opportunity to travel to California, Alaska, and finally the Far East – journeys that offer him new ...
What Are These Wounds?: The Life of a Cistercian Mystic Saint Lutgarde of Aywières

What Are These Wounds?: The Life of a Cistercian Mystic Saint Lutgarde of Aywières
Thoughts In Solitude

" Thoughts in Solitude stands alongside The Seven Storey Mountain as one of Merton's most uring and popular works. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentiethcentury.
The Ascent to Truth

Drawing on a range of thinkers—from Carl Jung to Pope Pius XII—Merton defines the nature of contemplative experience and shows how the Christian mysticism of sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite Saint John of the Cross offers essential ...
Thomas Merton's Rewritings: The Five Versions of Seeds/New Seeds of Contemplation as a Key to the Development of His Thought

This is the companion volume to Thomas Merton: The Development of a Spiritual Theologian, further exploring Merton's writings and thinking.
A Course in Desert Spirituality: Fifteen Sessions with the Famous Trappist Monk

Like its companion volume, A Course in Christian Mysticism, this book is a collection of fifteen lectures that get to the heart of Merton’s belief that monastic wisdom and spirituality are applicable for everyone.
Raids on the Unspeakable

A new summer grew upon the ocean, before our eyes, closely followed by autumn, then winter. The waves moved by with white hair. Time rode the secret waves, commanded only by Atlas and by his bell. There were ages passing by as we ...
The Seven Storey Mountain

One of the most famous books ever written about a man's search for faith and peace. The Seven Storey Mountain tells of the growing restlessness of a brilliant and passionate...
In the Valley of Wormwood: Cistercian Blessed and Saints of the Golden Age

They are now published here for a wide audience for the first time. This work of the very young Merton perhaps takes on added significance when one considers the writing that lay just ahead of him at the time.
New Seeds of Contemplation

" The thirty-nine short "seeds" that make up this book are intended to awaken and cultivate the contemplative, mystical dimension of the spiritual path for everyone.
Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings

There is no other Merton devotional like this, and the paperback edition will be elegantly designed and packaged.
The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

This is the first complete publication of Merton's last book, revised by the author shortly before he died, in which Merton draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the subject of contemplation/meditation in depth, and to ...
The New Man

The New Man shows Thomas Merton at the height of his powers and has as its theme the question of spiritual identity.
The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers

From 1948 until his death in 1968, Thomas corresponded with writers around the world, sharing with them his concerns about war, violence and repression, racism and injustice, and all forms of human aggression.
Zen and the Birds of Appetite

" This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays.
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

In this series of notes, opinions, experiences, and reflections, Thomas Merton examines some of the most urgent questions of our age.