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Reviewed by:
  • Miracle on High Street: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, N.J.
  • Mary Elizabeth Brown
Miracle on High Street: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, N.J. By Thomas A. McCabe. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. 336 pp. $26.95.

Miracle on High Street is a good book for supporters of St. Benedict’s Prep, because proceeds from book sales go to the school. It merits consideration from libraries and scholars interested in Newark, [End Page 80] Benedictines, educational theory and practice, sports history, urban renewal, and men’s studies. It might also be an inspirational read for educators.

Some readers will be a bit disappointed. Fordham has produced an attractive scholarly publication, with end notes and index, but it may lack the photographs and graphics for readers interested in strolling down memory lane with their alma mater. Scholars might want greater coverage of some topics: a prep school that considered the fact that its students lived at home an advantage on page 21 sprouts a dormitory on page 254: why? Also, has St. Benedict’s really taught a century’s worth of adolescents without once mentioning sex?

Judging former faculty member and author Thomas McCabe on what he set out to do rather on what he didn’t, Miracle ranks high. It is a well-organized survey of St. Benedict’s history from its opening in 1868 through the 1990s, based on published primary sources, St. Benedict’s archives, and interviews with faculty and alumni, and it incorporates secondary literature on Catholic, New Jersey, educational, and urban history. McCabe places St. Benedict’s history in multiple contexts, focusing on Catholic history in the nineteenth century, on the development of ideas of masculinity in the early twentieth century, and on urban history in the period after World War II. His larger narrative contains many smaller ones. McCabe has a provocative history of school discipline, with nineteenth-century German monks relying on demerits and detention, interwar Irish monks being more physically aggressive, and modern monks inculcating an honor code. He also has a well-rounded history of St. Benedict’s participation in high school sports, quoting both vigorous defenders of sports and news stories of interschool violence and vandalism surrounding team rivalries.

McCabe’s turning point is the closure and re-opening of St. Benedict’s in 1972–1973. McCabe attributes that crisis to prejudice that initially blinded the monks to the idea of teaching black youth, on the 1967 riots, and ongoing urban renewal that devastated Newark, [End Page 81] and its resolution to the monks’ Benedictine commitments to stability of place and to adaptability in serving that place, to their willingness to experiment with dress codes and other aspects of school life to create an experience that produced the best results for their new Black student majority, and to their development of a funding system that relied on sources other than just tuition. While this review is intended for historians to decide whether Miracle suits their professional needs, it might also be helpful to consider giving copies to educational administrators, to encourage them in their commitment to their institution’s vision and mission in the face of great change.

Mary Elizabeth Brown
Marymount Manhattan College
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