Continental Ambitions

Kevin Starr

Ignatius Press, 2016
675 pages, hardcover $34.95

Starr has achieved a fast-paced evocation of three Roman Catholic civilizations — Spain, France, and Recusant England — as they explored, evangelized, and settled the North American continent. Subtitled Roman Catholics in North America: The Colonial Experience, his book represents the first time this story has been told in one volume.

He begins with North America’s temporary settlement by recently Christianized Scandinavians. He ends with Maryland’s founding as a proprietary colony for Catholic Recusants, the rise of Philadelphia and southern Pennsylvania as centers of Catholic life, and the Suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. His honest history successfully compares and contrasts three disparate civilizations.

Order: Ignatius Press, Amazon