News 2018
Recent press for Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America
New York Times, “Don’t Mess With Dagger John”; 3/7, online; 3/11, print
Irish Times of Dublin, “Dagger John: Prelate a Major Force…”; 3/17, print and online
Fordham’s News, online newsletter and magazine
America, the Jesuit magazine, "An Archbishop nicknamed Dagger John"; 3/15
Library Journal, 3/1
Dorothy Day in the Age of Trump
John has signed a contract with Simon & Schuster for a project he began a year ago: a biography of the Catholic activist Dorothy Day. He is working with a co-author, Blythe Randolph, of Atlanta. The book will be edited by the legendary editor Alice Mayhew and will be published in 2020. The first biography of Day to be published by a trade house in thirty-five years: what could be more timely? Dorothy Day is the embodiment – there is no better example – of everything Donald Trump does not esteem or even understand. She presents all of us with a set of unusual spiritual and political challenges and offers a stark contrast to the values overtaking the United States at this utterly bizarre and unsettling moment in our history.
Making America Safe for Immigrants: No Wall
Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America will be published on March 15, 2018 by Three Hills, the trade imprint of Cornell University Press. Dagger John chronicles the life and times of the fourth archbishop of the New York archdiocese, John Hughes (1797 – 1864), the combative cleric who founded Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, advocated for a parochial school system of education, and worked to make a place for the reviled Irish-Catholic immigrants pouring into the United States during the time of the Great Famine. Derided for his efforts by Walt Whitman and Horace Greeley, he found allies in men like Henry Clay, William Seward, and Abraham Lincoln.
A reading and book signing will be held at the Corner Bookshop on Madison Avenue and 93rd
Street on April 4th at 6 p.m.
“My Millard Fillmore Problem”
Raritan will publish this essay in 2018. It makes the case for calling a halt to more biographies of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln and the Roosevelts (a cottage industry for historians, a goldmine for publishers). What of Millard Fillmore? No, he didn’t install the first bathtub in the White House (actually, he set up the first White House library). But he was as central to the unfolding drama – and tragedy – of mid-nineteenth century America as anyone more famous. It is time to consider how much of any story we are missing when we give in to questionable, time-honored notions of “major” and “minor” topics of study.
“Belief and Unbelief: Writing Catholic Biography”
The Antioch Review will publish this essay in 2018. “Belief and Unbelief” deals with the unique challenges of writing sympathetically about religious figures (e.g., Archbishop John Hughes, Dorothy Day) when the writer finds his own spiritual and religious values in a state of flux, hard to define, at odds with some elements of Catholic thought.
“Cast Ashore: Minor Lives Among Minor Lives”
The Hudson Review published this essay in its Spring 2017 issue. “Cast Ashore” is an essay about writing biographies about subjects few people have ever heard of – and the importance of paying attention to those lesser-known figures, the people whose lives can tell us as much about their times and the causes they served as those of their more famous peers. How many more biographies do we need of the Founding Fathers, the major presidents, the household names?