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484book reviews activities, especially in relation to the press, education, and religious persecution in Mexico. Preuss did, however, respect John A. Ryan and retain his friendship . He also held progressive views on race, calling for more equitable Catholic treatment of African-Americans, and he was an early advocate of liturgical reform . He had a scholar's interest in history and exchanged letters with Peter K. Guilday the leading American Catholic historian of the day. Indeed, there was some talk between them of Preuss's bringing his Review to Washington and pubUshing it under the auspices of the Catholic University! Preuss was far too independent for any such arrangement to have worked. He looked upon Catholic journalism as a true religious vocation and pursued it with heroic dedication, fighting for the most part against tendencies he regarded as pernicious and plagued throughout his life by ill-health.Whatever the relevance of his story to our own times—and Conley hints in his conclusion that it is considerable—it is, for historians, worth knowing for its own sake. Philip Gleason University ofNotre Dame DePaul University: Centennial Essays and Images. Edited byJohn L. Rury and Charles S. Suchar. (Chicago: DePaul University. 1998. Pp. ix, 374. $29.95 paperback .) The eight essays honoring DePaul University's centennial are not represented as critical history;yet the authors, all members of the school's academic community, are remarkably candid, forthright, and fair in recounting the record and assessing the accomplishments of DePaul. The book has three parts: Mission and Governance; Campus Culture and Student Life; and Making the Modern University. The presentation throughout is so even and smooth, due doubtless to superior editing, that the book reads as if it were the product of a single author. The authors' evident affection for their subject does not tempt them to blur the school's growing pains or ignore DePaul's frequent flirtation with financial instability, with crippling episodes involving accreditation, or with a tug of war over faculty standards where one side wanted traditional coUege instruction to have pride of place, and the other side embraced a definition of higher education where university objectives of research and publication were promoted. These issues persisted down through the years only to be revisited with special intensity during the decades after I960 along lines involving number and quality of graduate programs, faculty research, expansion of instructional facilities, the opening of the first residence haU in 1970 (which prefaced change in the school's personality), curricular innovation recognizing the needs of nontraditional students, and several genuine efforts to reform DePaul's version of general education. Add to this mixture the point that by 1997 the school was the academic home for 18,000 students. BOOK REVIEWS485 In any case, these complex issues surrounding "the making of a modern university " are rehearsed against a background of special scholastic aspiration that for the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians) concentrated on the seminary education of priests. The Vincentians came to Chicago from St. Mary's Seminary (founded in 1818) in PerryviUe, Missouri, to establish the parish of St. Vincent de Paul in 1875. Later,Archbishop Patrick Feehan asked the Vincentians to conduct a college for men. They accepted his invitation and opened St. Vincent College in September, 1898, with a student body of about seventy and a faculty of ten. In 1907 the school's 1898 charter was revised, giving it greater academic latitude and a new name: DePaul University. There might be many things for which DePaul can claim distinction in the history of Catholic higher education in this good land, but none can trump its position in the vanguard of coeducation, a policy that escaped neither ecclesiastical notice nor stinging criticism. DePaul, in 1914, was the first Catholic college to admit women with a status entirely equal to men. The authors of the early chapters acknowledge their debt to the splendid scholarship in Lester Goodchild's "The Mission of the Catholic University in the Midwest, 1842-1980," where DePaul's ecumenical character is featured: among other pioneering policies, curricular requirements excused non-Catholic students from taking courses in religion. Chapter notes are good but would serve readers better as footnotes; the illustrations...

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