Brennan Pursell's Benedict of Bavaria is a warm, richly descriptive, and insightful portrait of Joseph Ratzinger, from his birth in his native Bavaria to his present day mission in the Chair of Peter. 

If a biographer is a kind of portraitist in words, Pursell treats his subject with the deep respect, affinity, and understanding of the best of artists. As he readily shares in his Introduction, there is a personal connection at work, a sense of gratitude and indebtedness to one whose writings had such an impact on his own conversion from a "California hedonist" to a committed Catholic. Perhaps due to this sense of personal connection, Pursell does not paint Benedict just from the outside, as a stranger would do. He paints him also from the inside, from an acquaintance born of long hours of study and personal contact with the places and people of Ratzinger's homeland.