"Taken as a set, these stimulating essays shed new light upon the complex relationships between Franklin Roosevelt and the American Catholic community during the New Deal and between the United States and the Vatican during World War II. The book covers a remarkable range of personalities, issues and controversies and is especially insightful in exploring the multifaceted wartime diplomacy between Pius XII and the Roosevelt administration. These essays avoid polemics and deepen genuine historical understanding of an important subject." - Rev. Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C. Associate Professor of History, University of Notre Dame "David Woolner and Richard Kurial have put together by far the most stimulating and readable account of the remarkable relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Catholic hierarchy. A patrician Protestant president, FDR, as this book shows in rich and lively detail, appealed to Catholic Americans to sustain him and defied critical Protestant opinion by naming the first U.S. ambassador to the Vatican." - William E. Leuchtenburg, Author of The FDR Years and of In the Shadow of FDR: from Harry Truman to George W. Bush "This collection of papers is a useful volume, providing information, insight, and references and questions for further research for the scholar as well as for the interested reader." - James F. Garneau, The Catholic Historical Review