Book Review: ‘Christopher Dawson: A Cultural Mind in the Age of the Great War’

A guide to making sense of 2000 years of Western civilization

"Among the wreckage. Troops going forward at night," by Capt. Harvey Dunn, E.R.C. SC. Identifier 111 SC 31699. Public Domain

Dawson died in 1970 after half a century of significant publication. His reputation fell into the usual trough of posthumous neglect, but by the 1990s it had recovered, leading to various studies of his thought, new editions of his books (including a Collected Works series published by the Catholic University of America Press), and several educational initiatives to implement his ideas on the study of Christian culture as the vitalizing source of Western civilization.

Joseph Stuart has played an active role in this revival, both as a history professor at the University of Mary in North Dakota and through his academic writing, including a new Introduction he wrote in 2015 to Dawson’s book on the French Revolution, “The Gods of Revolution.”