Its appeal will not be exclusively to Catholics. This is a book which could be classified as autobiography, as well as religious.

His final disillusionment with materialistic solutions to life's problems, his conversion to Catholicism and his decision to become a monk are vividly described. There he became involved in organizations and movements aimed at doing away with social and economic injustices and even for a time joined a young communist group. Orphaned at age 20, he came to America and was a student at Columbia University. The Seven Storey Mountain is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one’s own. Born in France of Protestant American parents, he spent his early childhood there and his later childhood in England. For this is the life-story of a young man of brilliant prospects who has won something of a name for himself as a poet and who, having fully immersed himself in the world, decided at 26 to withdraw completely from the world and enter a Trappist monastery. The title of this book unfortunately gives no indication whatever of its contents. And when the pilgrimage itself is of an unusual nature and is related with wit, wisdom and real literary skill it is apt to command wide and favorable attention. Riggio of the book The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton 1/14/15 I finally read this book after years of my wife Micheline telling me that this was such wonderful book and well written by Thomas Merton, a Cistercian Monk, i.e., a cloistered monk who dedicates his life to silence and the devotion to God in all labors at the monastery. His parents were both artists, one American and one from New Zealand, though he had also lived in the United Kingdom for a time. Any frank tale of an individual's spiritual pilgrimage has a certain amount of fascination for the reader. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain While Merton is remembered for his books written in America in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, he was born in France in 1915.

The 7 storey mountain