Pope Benedict XVI&;s iconic life of Jesus, a rich, compelling, flesh-and-blood portrait of the central figure of the Christian faith.   &;This book is . . . my personal search &;for the face of the Lord.&;&;&;Benedict XVI In this bold, momentous work, the Pope seeks to salvage the person of Jesus from today&;s &;popular&; depictions and to restore his true identity as discovered in the Gospels. Through his brilliance as a theologian and his personal conviction as a believer, the Pope incites us to encounter Jesus face to face.  From  Jesus of Nazareth : &;. . . the great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: But what has Jesus really brought, then, if he has not brought world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God! He has brought the God who once gradually unveiled his countenance first to Abraham, then to Moses and the prophets, and then in the wisdom literature&;the God who showed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the peoples of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope, and love.&; *Starred Review* Begun before his election to the papacy, this is the first volume of a work that Benedict intimates he may not live long enough to complete. Its 10 chapters—on, respectively, Jesus' baptism, his temptation in the desert, the nature of the kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the disciples, the parables, the principal images of John's Gospel, Peter's confession and Jesus' Transfiguration, and Jesus' two self-descriptions, "Son of Man" and "Son"—are masterfully cogent and accessible essays in orthodox Christian exegesis. Canonical exegesis, to be precise; that is, the passages discussed in each chapter are interpreted within the prophetic context of the continuous document that contains them, the Bible. The meanings of Jesus' words, deeds, and person are always educed with the aid and understanding of the religious thought and practice of the preceding Hebrew Scriptures. While he aims to respond to the twentieth-century torrent of historical Jesus literature that in general makes Jesus a man of his time and place in Roman Palestine, Benedict doesn't repudiate or even much criticize that literature. Indeed, he accepts and looks forward to more of what archaeological and historical anthropological and sociological research has discovered about Jesus' milieu. As tender as it is erudite and brilliant, this is a book for every religion collection. Olson, Ray Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved JOSEPH RATZINGER , Pope Benedict XVI, born in 1927 in Germany, has been head of the Roman Catholic Church since April 2005. A prolific author, theologian, and university professor, Ratzinger served as an &;expert&; at the Second Vatican Council, and was appointed in 1977 by Pope Paul VI to lead the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. In 1981, Pope John Paul II called him to Rome to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he served until his papal election.