American Priest
The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame's Father Ted Hesburgh
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
About this listen
A provocative new biography probes deeply into the storied life of Father Ted Hesburgh, the well-loved but often controversial president of Notre Dame University.
Considered for many decades to be the most influential priest in America, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh played what many consider pivotal roles in higher education, the Catholic Church, and national and international affairs. American Priest examines his life and his many and varied engagements - from the university he led for 35 years to his associations with the Vatican and the White House - and evaluates the extent and importance of his legacy.
Author and Notre Dame priest-professor Wilson D. Miscamble tracks how Hesburgh transformed Catholic higher education in the postwar era and explores how he became a much-celebrated voice in America at large. Yet, beyond the hagiography that often surrounds Hesburgh’s legacy lies another more complex and challenging story. What exactly were his contributions to higher learning; what was his involvement in the civil rights movement; and what was the nature of his role as advisor to popes and presidents?
Understanding Hesburgh’s life and work illuminates the journey that the Catholic Church traversed over the second half of the 20th century. Exploring and evaluating Hesburgh’s importance, then, contributes not only to the colorful history of Notre Dame but also to comprehending the American Catholic experience.
Praise for American Priest
“An excellent, engaging biography...[Miscamble] deftly captures the ‘whole Hesburgh’ in a fair and thorough portrait.” (Catholic Philly)
“Excellent...the story that Father Miscamble tells is an all-American story - the rise of a Catholic of relatively modest background, close to his immigrant roots, to a place of prominence among the nation’s elite.” (Public Discourse)
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Critic reviews
"Very few men, clergy or lay, have shaped the American Catholic experience of the last century more powerfully than Notre Dame’s Theodore Hesburgh. Priest, religious, educator, visionary, builder, emissary, celebrity - he inhabited all these roles with exceptional passion, skill, and commensurate ambition. The author captures the complicated genius, and the equally complex times, of Hesburgh the man with exactly the right balance of admiring and critical eye. This is a deep, rich, superbly engaging biography of a force of nature on the post-conciliar American Catholic scene." (Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia)
"Fr. Wilson Miscamble is uniquely qualified to tell the story of the legendary Fr. Hesburgh. Balanced, thorough, and gracefully written, this remarkable biography will be of interest to anyone who wants more fully to understand American Catholicism in the 20th century." (Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles and author of To Light a Fire on the Earth)
"An incisive portrait of Theodore Hesburgh as the influential embodiment of one way of being Catholic and American in the last half of the 20th century." (George Weigel, author of The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy)
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Recognize that this is a profoundly partisan book
- By Anonymous User on 11-05-23
By: Jeff Nussbaum
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Leadership
- By: Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Narrated by: Beau Bridges, David Morse, Jay O. Sanders, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon four of the presidents she has studied most closely - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) - to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized by others as leaders.
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What makes a president great?
- By Anonymous User on 09-25-18
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The Bush Tragedy
- By: Jacob Weisberg
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In this first important consideration of the George W. Bush presidency and its profound impact on the state of the world, Jacob Weisberg crafts a wide-ranging portrait that is both balanced and insightful. Weisberg traces the evolution of Bush's political philosophy from its roots in his early life and his years as governor of Texas through the events of 9/11 and his turbulent two terms in office.
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Ahead of the Crowd
- By Anonymous User on 02-14-08
By: Jacob Weisberg
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Rebbe
- The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History
- By: Joseph Telushkin
- Narrated by: Rich Topol
- Length: 18 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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From his modest headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Rebbe advised some of the world's greatest leaders and shaped matters of state and society. Statesmen and artists as diverse as Ronald Reagan, Robert F. Kennedy, Yitzchak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Elie Wiesel, and Bob Dylan span the spectrum of those who sought his counsel.
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Only good things
- By Anonymous User on 06-01-17
By: Joseph Telushkin
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Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
- By: Ezra F. Vogel
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 33 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Once described by Mao Zedong as a "needle inside a ball of cotton", Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China's radical transformation in the late 20th century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao's cult of personality, and loosened the policies that had stunted China's growth. Obsessed with modernization, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet he also answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.
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Another butcher of the Chinese language
- By Anonymous User on 09-19-21
By: Ezra F. Vogel
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Roosevelt's Second Act
- The Election of 1940 and the Politics of War
- By: Richard Moe
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On August 31, 1939, nearing the end of his second and presumably final term in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was working in the Oval Office and contemplating construction of his presidential library and planning retirement. The next day German tanks had crossed the Polish border; Britain and France had declared war. Overnight the world had changed, and FDR found himself being forced to consider a dramatically different set of circumstances.
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Puts listener in the moment.
- By Anonymous User on 05-16-14
By: Richard Moe
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The Road to Camelot
- Inside JFK's Five-Year Campaign
- By: Thomas Oliphant, Curtis Wilkie
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A behind-the-scenes, revelatory account of John F. Kennedy's wily campaign for the White House, beginning with his bold failed attempt to win the vice presidential nomination in 1956. A young and undistinguished junior plots his way to the presidency and changes the way we nominate and elect presidents. John F. Kennedy and his young warriors invented modern presidential politics.
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Absolutely excellent
- By Anonymous User on 08-22-20
By: Thomas Oliphant, and others
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A Woman in Charge
- The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton
- By: Carl Bernstein
- Narrated by: Dick Rodstein
- Length: 24 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Carl Bernstein's stunning portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton shows us, as nothing else has, the true trajectory of her life and career, with its zigzag bursts of risks taken and safety sought. Marshaling all the skills and energy that propelled his history-making Pulitzer Prize reporting on Watergate, Bernstein gives us the most detailed, sophisticated, comprehensive, and revealing account of Hilary Rodham Clinton yet.
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in depth and well-written
- By Anonymous User on 07-20-07
By: Carl Bernstein
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Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
- A Political Marriage
- By: Nicholas Wapshott
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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It is well known that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were close allies and kindred political spirits. During their eight overlapping years in office, the U.S. president and the U.K. prime minister worked together to promote lower taxes, deregulation, free trade, and an aggressive stance against the Soviet Union. But according to Nicholas Wapshott, the Reagan/Thatcher relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests.
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A Better Half
- By Anonymous User on 06-01-11
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The Evangelicals
- The Struggle to Shape America
- By: Frances FitzGerald
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 25 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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This groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America - from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.
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Great book
- By Anonymous User on 12-27-17
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The Firebrand and the First Lady
- Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice
- By: Patricia Bell-Scott
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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An important, groundbreaking book - two decades in work - that tells the story of the unlikely but history-changing 28-year bond forged between Pauli Murray (granddaughter of a mulatto slave who, against all odds, as a lesbian Black woman, became a lawyer, civil rights pioneer, Episcopal priest, poet, and activist) and Eleanor Roosevelt (first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1948 and human rights internationalist) that critically shaped Eleanor Roosevelt's, and therefore FDR's, view of race and racism in America.
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Inspiring
- By Jean on 02-20-16
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Bearing the Cross
- Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- By: David J. Garrow
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 34 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. David J. Garrow had unrestricted access to Martin Luther King's personal papers, to thousands of pages of newly released FBI documents and more than 700 interviews with King's closest friends and enemies.
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great but long
- By Anonymous User on 04-29-10
By: David J. Garrow