Our backlist is full of books that continue to be an integral part of discussion in their respective fields and beyond. From philosophy, to theology, to memoirs, Notre Dame Press has classic titles of both importance and relevance. Here are a few highlights from our classics list, with blurbs that show the impact these texts had when they were first published and continue to have with readers today.
Classics in Philosophy
After Virtue:
A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition
by Alasdair MacIntyre
“After Virtue is a striking work. It is clearly written and readable. The nonprofessional will find MacIntyre perspicuous and lively. He stands within the best modern traditions of writing on such matters.”
—New York Review of Books
The One and the Many:
A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics
by W. Norris Clarke S.J.
“This is the book that many of us have long been waiting for: the systematic exposition of the Thomistically inspired but creative metaphysical system of one of the foremost philosophers in the Thomistic tradition. The work is not a recapitulation of standard Thomistic metaphysics so much as a re-creation, on Thomistic principles, of a contemporary metaphysical view that pushes Thomas’ principles to new developments and applications. Clarke stresses participation in the act of existence, substance as dynamic, system as a new metaphysical category, philosophic ramifications of evolution and relativity, and the great circle of being embodied in the universe. The book is well suited to both as a text in a course in metaphysics and as an historically conscious source of insights for the professional philosopher.”
—James W. Felt, S.J., John Nobili Professor of Philosophy, Santa Clara University
The Four Cardinal Virtues:
Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge
by Josef Pieper
“Dr. Pieper, with his grounding in Scholastic thinking, especially Thomas Aquinas, brings to the reader an interpretation of this classical tradition that has things to say about the human person today. He attempts to make what could become a list of requirements for ethical behavior into a human quest for the wisdom that enables one to become the kind of person one strives to be.”—Studies in Formative Spirituality
Classics in Theology
The Peaceable Kingdom:
A Primer in Christian Ethics
by Stanley Hauerwas
“A concise and provocative discussion of the nature of ethics. . . . Hauerwas speaks of the importance of testing our skills against the excellences of others. Reading his book provides just such a test.”
—Journal of Religion
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
by John Henry Cardinal Newman
“It is a great boon to Newman scholars and to the general public to have available the revised, 1878 edition of Newman’s essay on development. . . . As an added benefit, it contains a superb foreword by Father Ian Ker which places the essay within the context of Newman’s own theological work as well as that of the theological understandings of development which preceded and followed the essay. [It] is also the profoundly personal stand of one of the finest theological minds of the nineteenth century. . . . This book belongs in every theological library, and is accessible to most educated readers. It is especially rewarding for those who find the study of history a liberating theological exercise.”
—The Catholic World
Classics in Memoir
Barrio Boy:
40th Anniversary Edition
by Ernesto Galarza
“Galarza’s classic speaks louder now than when I read it as an undergrad in 1970 during the early formation of Chicano Studies at UCLA. The novel’s triple metaphors of the rooster versus the vulture, the boy versus the bull and the village versus the city braid into a whip of power in bold relief—colonization, displacement and exploitation. The painful transitions from the familiar to the strange and from the harmonies of the village to the existential vacuums of the metropolis are given to us to re-consider and behold—brutal forces that may have gained momentum in our millennium. Yet, there is fragile beauty, inescapable synthesis, and leadership burning out of a new voice shifting between home and homeland. You must take this book and treasure it, walk with it, converse with it and carry its most human story in your heart—so you will live and act fully. A cultural classic yesterday, a riveting, fiery illumination today.”
—Juan Felipe Herrera, University of California, Riverside
God, Country, Notre Dame:
The Autobiography of Theodore M. Hesburgh
by Theodore M. Hesburgh C.S.C.
“Father Hesburgh says that each one of us can do something effective in the cause of a better world. God, Country, Notre Dame itself embodies an obvious refutation of the apathetic notion that ‘in the modern world one person cannot make a difference.’”
—Commonweal