Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and Revolution, 1891-1956 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300225518)

In Poland in the 1940s and '50s, a new kind of Catholic intended to remake European social and political life--not with guns, but French philosophy

This collective intellectual biography examines generations of deeply religious thinkers whose faith drove them into public life, including Karol Wojtyla, future Pope John Paul II, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the future prime minister who would dismantle Poland's Communist regime.

Seeking to change the way we understand the Catholic Church, World War II, the Cold War, and communism, this study centers on the idea of "revolution." It examines two crucial countries, France and Poland, while challenging conventional wisdom among historians and introducing innovations in periodization, geography, and methodology. Why has much of Eastern Europe gone back down the road of exclusionary nationalism and religious prejudice since the end of the Cold War? Piotr H. Kosicki helps to understand the crises of contemporary Europe by examining the intellectual world of Roman Catholicism in Poland and France between the Church's declaration of war on socialism in 1891 and the demise of Stalinism in 1956.

Author: Piotr H. Kosicki
ISBN-10: 0300225512
ISBN-13: 9780300225518
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/09/2018
Pages: 424
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/01/2018
Choice 07/01/2018