George N. Shuster: On the Side of Truth by Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS117 Several gifted women writers, including Katherine Conway and Martha Moore Avery, also had their difficulties with the chancery. A Catholic women's architecture firm, led by Eleanor Manning, never won church building commissions and had to concentrate on domestic restorations instead. As Kane says, "while women theoretically supported die Church's antisuffragism and gender conservatism, the lives and writings of Catholic women repudiate stereotypes ofthemselves as weak, uncompetitive, and unfit for public activity" (p. 322). Kane makes clear her preference for these gifted women over the obstructive men who stifled their creativity. Cardinal William O'Connell is the central character of diis book; Kane depicts him as a domineering dullard. His nephew and his personal chaplain both got married on the sly and indulged in extramarital sexual escapades too. The cardinal tried to cover up these scandals when he discovered them, possibly afraid that his subordinates would reveal his alleged homosexuality. He forged his own "early letters," published in 1915, feuded with ambitious priests in his archdiocese, and let personality clashes get in the way of rational reforms. Eager to centralize and act the part of a modern manager, he was often ineffective. He was an effective builder, however, and as Kane says, when embezzlement charges led die Vatican to investigate him in the early 1920's, he pleaded in mitigation ofhis sins the completion of"eighty-one new parishes, twenty-five missions, two colleges, and two retreat houses, all debt-free" (p. 115). This cardinal with feet of clay is an apt central figure for the paradoxical community he tried to lead into the twentieth century, and Kane's unsparing portrait of him, like the book as a whole, is engaging and convincing. Patrick Allitt Emory University George N Shuster: On the Side of Truth. By Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University ofNotre Dame Press. 1993. Pp. xi, 479. 834.95.) The versatile and remarkable George N. Shuster (1894—1977) and the multiple dimensions of his life have been ably presented and analyzed in this splendidly executed biography by Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C, associate professor of history in the University of Notre Dame. The oldest of three children, and only son in a German-speaking, smalltown , mini-farm Wisconsin household, Schuster (the c was dropped in young adulthood) enrolled at Notre Dame in 1912. His intellectual abilities and strong preparatory school background resulted in his direct admittance to the sophomore class, and he was soon asked by an English professor to assist him in correcting freshman themes, which he did. He wrote for die student publication, The Scholastic, was awarded the medal for sophomore oratory, and was lead speaker for the debate team for the next two years, winning 118BOOK REVIEWS commencement medals both years. Notre Dame debaters enjoyed their 1915 defeat of St. Viator's College of Illinois. That victory was later recalled by Shuster widi a modest smile. The lead speaker for the defeated team was young Fulton J. Sheen. Following graduation, Shuster accepted a job teaching English in a Minnesota public high school, continued his writing, had three literary articles published in The Catholic World, and became an army private following his enlistment in 1917. Blantz has not only an eye for a telling detail, but the diligence of research mat unearths such detail, and each succeeding chapter brings focus to Shuster's virtual multiplicity of lives. Shuster as Notre Dame teacher and humanist, 1919-1924, is followed by Shuster, the Commonweal Catholic, 1925-1937. Shuster, the analyst and interpreter of events in Germany, 1930-1939, is followed by two chapters dealing with his life as President of the dien largest college for women in the world, Hunter College (1939-1960). These same years, however, are also years of Shuster's emergence as a national figure as he continued to publish widely (he wrote nearly twenty books and 300 articles) on international affairs, the treatment of Germany, and die state of education. His Columbia University doctoral dissertation, The English Ode from Milton to Keats, did not get completed till 1939 mostly because dealing widi Hitler took priority. Shuster later chaired a War Department Committee interviewing German prisoners of...