LOSS AND GAIN may well be the easiest and best place for non-specialists to begin with myriad-minded John Henry Newman. It is a novel about Oxford and fleshes out Newman's belief that students form their deepest convictions from their discussions with one another and not from teachers. It is also a novel very much like a Platonic dialog that presents and wrestles with various theories of why intelligent young men are either content to stay with their inherited personal faith or are moved to seek another. This novel mirrors Newman s experience.