American Catholic

In American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020), Darryl Hart's addresses the foundational changes in thinking about church-state relations within American Catholicism that contributed so much to the development of the modern conservative movement. Hart tracks the ways in which American Catholics adapted their tradition in the context of a largely protestant republic, and offers detailed and nuanced readings of the controversies and achievements that this engendered. As American conservatism continues to adapt, and as President Biden's Catholic faith continues to be politicised, this book makes for essential reading.

Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast.