Catholicism and the Shaping of Nineteenth-Century America

Jon Gjerde (February 25, 1953–October 26, 2008) was an American historian and the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he also served as chair of the History Department and Dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. He is the author of the award-winning From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper Middle West and The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830–1917. S. Deborah Kang is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a specialist in the areas of American legal, western and immigration history and the author of The Legal Construction of the Borderlands: The INS, Immigration Law, and Immigrant Rights on the U.S.-Mexico Border, which will be published in 2012.

• 1. Editor's preface S. Deborah Kang; 2. Introduction Jon Gjerde; 3. The Protestant conundrum Jon Gjerde; The Catholic conundrum Jon Gjerde; 4. Conversion and the West Jon Gjerde; 5. Schools and the state Jon Gjerde; 6. Protestant and Catholic critiques of family and women Jon Gjerde; 7. The American economy and social justice Jon Gjerde; 8. Epilogue S. Deborah Kang.

'… a nuanced examination of how Catholic and Protestant leaders' disagreements over a range of issues shaped antebellum society and how the lack of victory by either side shaped national identity long afterward.' John Dichtl, Indiana Magazine of History