Saint Augustine

Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills brings the same fresh scholarship, lively prose, and critical appreciation that characterize his well-known books on religion and American history to this outstanding biography of one of the most influential Christian philosophers.

Saint Augustine follows its subject from his youth in fourth-century Africa to his conversion and subsequent development as a theologian. It challenges the widely held misconceptions about Augustine’s sexual excesses and shows how, in embracing classical philosophy, Augustine managed to enlist “pagan authors” in the defense of Christianity. The result is a biography that makes a spiritual ancestor feel like our contemporary."Less the history of a man than the progress of a frank, dynamic, jazzy and fiercely serious mind . . . The writing is exceptional throughout-- rich and surprising with detail."
--Chicago Tribune

"Seldom has this long-familiar figure . . . emerged so fresh and challenging from under so masterful a hand."
--The New York Review of Books

"A brilliant biography . . . Garry Will's agile mind matches the agility of St. Augustine's. He presents his subject with candor and with empathy."
--The New York Times Book Review  Garry Wills is a historian and the author of the New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant, Papal Sin, Why I Am a Catholic, and Why Priests?, among others. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and other publications, Wills is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a professor emeritus at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois