It was about six years ago that I first heard the name Christopher Dawson.

It was one of those lovely days in the month of May when one is finally rewarded for enduring a Minnesota winter. My sophomore year at the University of St. Thomas had just come to an end, and most of my friends were packing up their things to go home for the summer. I was one of the last people to leave the dorms that spring. I don’t know why. I think I had the sense even then that those were good days. Having just completed my final paper of the term, I was breathing the freshness of the open air again. I think you know what I mean. I had that feeling that one gets when he has just finished a very long project and finally has the chance to do whatever he wants. Two years into my undergraduate studies, I was just beginning to take a serious interest in the liberal arts.

It was then, amidst all of the hustle and bustle of students gathering up their things to go home, that I first heard of Dawson. I had wandered into the room of a friend who was to graduate in just a couple of days. He was packing his up his books, box by box, when he came upon a particular volume and hesitated. Looking back on that moment, I think he was holding a copy of Christianity and European Culture; at any rate it was a book written by Christopher Dawson. My friend seemed most interested in this little volume, and so I asked him what it was all about. I vividly recall him telling me what I have since come to know very well: that Dawson was a Catholic historian who understood that cultures are the basic units of historical inquiry, and that religion is the basis of culture. Since that day I’ve spent a great many nights reading Dawson’s work, and I don’t think I could improve upon this brief description.

It was just a few months later that I first read Dawson for myself, and I’ve hardly put him down ever since.