Edward Sorin /

A skilled biographer and professor emeritus of history at Notre Dame, O'Connell (Blaise Pascal: Reason of the Heart) honors the legacy of Edward Sorin with blunt honesty and fraternal esteem. Drawing on archival resources, many housed at the University of Notre Dame, and on his own travels and studies, O'Connell chronicles the life of the missionary priest from France who founded the world-famous University of Notre Dame. O'Connell has thoroughly researched and documented the life and labor of Sorin, beginning with his birth in Ahuille, France, and concluding some 79 years later in the presbytery at Notre Dame, surrounded by his beloved religious co-workers. Sorin was given the task of creating a college, and in a short 800 pages the reader enters into the world of 19th-century Catholicism and experiences Sorin's challenges and joys as he faced this daunting goal. This encyclopedic work is both engaging and academic and destined to be the definitive work on Edward Sorin. Recommended for all academic libraries. John-Leonard Berg, Univ. of Wisconsin, Platteville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.