Overview

Over the course of the twentieth century, Catholics, who make up a quarter of the population of the United States, made significant contributions to American culture, politics, and society. They built powerful political machines in Chicago, Boston, and New York; led influential labor unions; created the largest private school system in the nation; and established a vast network of hospitals, orphanages, and charitable organizations. Yet in both scholarly and popular works of history, the distinctive presence and agency of Catholics as Catholics is almost entirely absent. In this book, R. Scott Appleby and Kathleen Sprows Cummings bring together American historians of race, politics, social theory, labor, and gender to address this lacuna, detailing in cogent and wide-ranging essays how Catholics negotiated gender relations, raised children, thought about war and peace, navigated the workplace and the marketplace, and imagined their place in the national myth of origins and ends. A long overdue corrective, Catholics in the American Century restores Catholicism to its rightful place in the American story. Contributors: R. Scott Appleby, University of Notre Dame; Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University; Kathleen Sprows Cummings, University of Notre Dame; R. Marie Griffith, Washington University in St. Louis; David G. Gutierrez, University of California, San Diego; Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; John T. McGreevy, University of Notre Dame; Robert Orsi, Northwestern University; Thomas Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania

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9780801451409

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Reviews

The overall impact of the book is a valuable one: in this day and age when the hierarchy is extremely vocal about its version of American Catholicism, in truth, Catholics have always had to forge their own vision of what it is to be Catholic in America sometimes creating something entirely new, sometimes in sharp contrast to others of their same faith. Conscience (2013)

<p> Catholics in the American Century offers a collection of thoughtful and useful essays on an important matter of historiography: how Catholic history can be integrated into the larger themes of American history. -James M. O'Toole, Boston College, editor of Habits of Devotion

<p> Catholics in the American Century offers a collection of thoughtful and useful essays on an important matter of historiography: how Catholic history can be integrated into the larger themes of American history. James M. O'Toole, Boston College, editor of Habits of Devotion

<p> These six wide-ranging and impressive essays do indeed 'recast narratives of US history' through the lens and critique of Catholicism. . . . Taken together, they challenge well-trodden tales of Catholics in America becoming American Catholics. Deftly tying [them] together . . ., coeditor Appleby's conclusion gestures to future research prospects that more fully integrate Catholic history into US history, perhaps even seeing the two as intertwined. This book would be a great addition to not just collections on Catholicism in the US, but also, taking up the book's charge, collections on US history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Choice (June 2013)

Author Information

R. Scott Appleby is Professor of History and the John M. Regan Jr. Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation and ""Church and Age Unite!"": The Modernist Impulse in American Catholicism. Kathleen Sprows Cummings is Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholic Identity in the Progressive Era.

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