I'm not going to pretend I got nothing from this book, but it's hard to take seriously. It was hard to take seriously when I read it last month; it's even harder to take seriously now, because this book's essential argument is: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century is the policy platform of the American Republican Party.

Um... no, it's not. But Royal, like so many Americans, sees everything in an absurdly politicized, Cold War-tinged light. Despite his protestations, it seems fairly clear that he despises Vatican II and everything that went with it; he sees any attempt to, you know, care about people as a horrendous betrayal of the essentially American-conservative nature of his religion.

That would be fine; one can hold that ridiculous position consistently, provided you're willing to ignore the enormous mass of Catholic Social Teaching that would suggest American society is, in fact, a tool of the devil.

What is not fine is Royal's utter ignorance of anyone and everyone who doesn't fit his cramped understanding of the true and the good. So, in this book, John Paul II is somehow considered a more important theologian than anyone from South America, ever. Strange. Edward Gibbon, meanwhile, is said to have thought it worthless to study history between the fall of the Roman Republic and the 'pagan' Renaissance--which would come as quite a shock to anyone who's read through his thousands and thousands of pages about, you know, everything in between.

Royal has the stamina for this immense project, which is quite an achievement. On the evidence of this book, though, he lacks the intellectual depth, cultural breadth, and, well, cosmopolitanism needed to do it well. ( )