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9780268013936

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Reviews

"""Anyone who grows misty-eyed with romantic nostalgia over the good old, pre-Vatican II days of the American church is fated to have his/her eyes blink open with surprise on reading this book. Had Edwin O'Connor known but half the story of the good cardinal that this biography reveals, his Last Hurrah would still be required reading as a cautionary tale in every rectory."" -- Commonweal"

Anyone who grows misty-eyed with romantic nostalgia over the good old, pre-Vatican II days of the American church is fated to have his/her eyes blink open with surprise on reading this book. Had Edwin O'Connor known but half the story of the good cardinal that this biography reveals, his Last Hurrah would still be required reading as a cautionary tale in every rectory. --Commonweal

""Anyone who grows misty-eyed with romantic nostalgia over the good old, pre-Vatican II days of the American church is fated to have his/her eyes blink open with surprise on reading this book. Had Edwin O'Connor known but half the story of the good cardinal that this biography reveals, his Last Hurrah would still be required reading as a cautionary tale in every rectory."" —Commonweal ""... a lucid biography of one of the least attractive figures in U.S. Catholic history, Boston's Cardinal William Henry O'Connell. While Boston's Catholics have long stated that O'Connell gave them a sense of pride, there was another side to his story and that is the one O'Toole tells so well."" —America “. . . a page turner, galvanized by a classic immigrant success story that traces O’Connell’s quick rise from obscure origins in immigrant Lowell to the rectorship of an American seminary in Rome, and then to the Portland and Boston bishops’ offices.” —The Boston Globe “O’Toole’s biography tells O’Connell’s story with dispassionate judiciousness, but also with a sharp eye on the story’s significance for the disheartening tour that the Catholic Church has taken in the twentieth century.” —The Atlantic Monthly “The story of O’Connell, archbishop of Boston and one of the most powerful men in the city from 1907 until his death in 1944, is magnificently told by James M. O’Toole. . . . a wry and thorough account of one of America’s most important prelates.” —Boston Magazine “James O’Toole’s biography of O’Connell is one of the finest ever to be written on an American Roman Catholic bishop. Few biographers have drawn as compelling a portrait of their subject.” —Church History

Author Information

James M. O'Toole is a professor and the Clough Millennium chair in history at Boston College.

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