John Loughery

Blythe Randolph

“[A] masterpiece.” —The Guardian “A good biography holds your attention; a great one transcends its subject and sheds light on the myriad forces bearing down on an individual at a particular point in time. Dorothy Day belongs, luminously, to the second [category].” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A vivid account of her political and religious development.” —Karen Armstrong, The New York Times “Reviving a voice for our times.” —Samantha Power, The Washington Post “Magisterial and glorious.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The first full authoritative biography of Dorothy Day: American icon, radical pacifist, Catholic convert, and advocate for the homeless whom Pope Francis I compared to Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a leftwing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next fifty years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism. Her protests began in 1917, leading to her arrest during the suffrage demonstration outside President Wilson’s White House. In 1940 she spoke in Congress against the draft and urged young men not to register. She told audiences in 1962 that the US was as much to blame for the Cuban missile crisis as Cuba and the USSR. She refused to hear any criticism of the pope, though she sparred with American bishops and priests who lived in well-appointed rectories while tolerating racial segregation in their parishes. Dorothy Day is the exceptional biography of a dedicated modern-day pacifist, an outspoken advocate for the poor, and a lifelong anarchist. This definitive and insightful account is “a monumental exploration of the life, legacy, and spirituality of the Catholic activist” (Spirituality & Practice).

Dissenting Voice of the American Century

Dorothy Day

Loughery offers the first narrative history to consider signal moments, general trends, and the multiple meanings of "gay identity" in the whole United States, from World War I to the present. 40 photos.

Men's Lives & Gay Identities - A Twentieth-Century History

The Other Side of Silence

An anthology of seventeen non-fiction essays provide examples of personal narratives, arguments, and digressive discourse, and reveal insight into such subjects as cattle grazing, the death of Socrates, and becoming a doctor.

An Anthology of Classic & Creative Nonfiction

The Eloquent Essay

A collection of twenty-six short stories about young people, from twenty-two different countries.

International Coming-of-age Stories

Into the Widening World

Documenting New York City's cultural coming-of-age, a historical biography of an American painter and propagandist reveals the social and political scene of the early 1900s, including Sloan's activist wife, Dolly.

Painter and Rebel

John Sloan

Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John’s College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840 and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions in a time of nativist bigotry and church burnings and worked tirelessly to help Irish Catholic immigrants find acceptance in their new homeland. His galvanizing and protecting work and pugnacious style earned him the epithet Dagger John. When the interests of his church and ethnic community were at stake, Hughes acted with purpose and clarity. In Dagger John, Loughery reveals Hughes’s life as it unfolded amid turbulent times for the religious and ethnic minority he represented. Hughes the public figure comes to the fore, illuminated by Loughery’s retelling of his interactions with, and responses to, every major figure of his era, including his critics (Walt Whitman, James Gordon Bennett, and Horace Greeley) and his admirers (Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln). Loughery peels back the layers of the public life of this complicated man, showing how he reveled in the controversies he provoked and believed he had lived to see many of his goals achieved until his dreams came crashing down during the Draft Riots of 1863 when violence set Manhattan ablaze. To know "Dagger" John Hughes is to understand the United States during a painful period of growth as the nation headed toward civil war. Dagger John’s successes and failures, his public relationships and private trials, and his legacy in the Irish Catholic community and beyond provide context and layers of detail for the larger history of a modern culture unfolding in his wake.

Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America

Dagger John

Recounts the rise and fall of Willard Huntington Wright, alias S. S. Van Dine--the virtual creator of the modern detective novel whose dramatic swing from success to failure epitomized the Jazz Age in which he lived.

Alias S. S. Van Dine

A son of Ulster -- A vocation -- Courting controversy -- New York City, 1838-1839 -- Who shall teach our children -- The Baal of bigotry -- War and famine -- A widening stage -- The church militant -- Authority challenged -- A new cathedral -- A nation divided, a church divided -- Manhattan under siege

John Loughery

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