Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, and Edward Rice were college buddies who became lifelong friends, literary innovators, and spiritual iconoclasts. Their friendship and collaboration began at Columbia College in the 1930s and reached its climax in Jubilee magazine, which ran from 1953 to 1967, a year before Merton's death. Rice was founder, publisher, editor, and art director; Merton and Lax two of his steadiest collaborators. Well-known on campus for their high spirits, avant-garde appreciation of jazz and Joyce, and indiscriminate love of movies, they also shared their Catholic faith. Rice, a cradle Catholic, was godfather to both Merton and Lax.<BR>This book is not only the story of a three-way friendship but a detailed depiction of the changes in American Catholic life over the past sixty-some years, a micro history of progressive Catholicism from the 1940s to the turn of the 21st century.