Born in 1915 in France to artists-an American mother with Quaker roots from New York, and a New Zealand-born father-Thomas Merton would become one of the twentieth century's most influential spiritual leaders. Baptized as a Catholic at age twenty-six, he joined a Trappist monastery near Louisville a year later. From that point on, his spiritual side exploded into a tsunami of directions-Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism,...