In this robust study of the role of religious thought and spirituality in the formation of the early Czechoslovak state, historian Bruce Berglund offers a necessary corrective to the historiographic insistence on Czechoslovakia's fundamentally secular national character in the interwar period. A scholar of religion in Eastern Europe, Berglund digs deeply into the personal stories of individuals, famous and less famous, involved with state building and cultural production in the 1920s. We meet a group of politicians, intellectuals, architects, writers, and activists whose public associations with nationalism and secularism hid profound religious inclinations that influenced their actions and thinking. Significant evidence from an impressive array of sources is brought forward—personal letters, diaries, and popular media among them—that make this observation seem at once completely obvious and also thrillingly unexpected. Some of the most interesting aspects of the analysis are Berglund's sophisticated discussions of interdenominational rivalries, the position of the official churches and other forms of belief in the activities of the new state, and the ways in which figures who eschewed church affiliations nevertheless had rich spiritual lives.

The book is written in a hybrid format with some biographical chapters and others that are analytical and thematic. The first three of seven chapters are each a condensed intellectual biography of an individual: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia; Jože Plečník, a Slovene architect who taught at the School of Applied Industrial Arts in Prague and led the renovation of the Prague Castle complex after 1918; and Alice Garrigue Masaryková, the daughter of Tomáš and his American-born wife Charlotte, who was an activist and head of the Czechoslovak Red Cross. Berglund is confident and self-assured in presenting his arguments. He wastes no time with a long literature review to make the case for religiosity as a critical aspect of this period; for him it is so clear as to not even need an explanation. Given the abundance of materials presented, the reader quickly understands why. In his chapter on Masaryk, titled “The Philosopher in Search of Truth,” Berglund writes about Masaryk's early career as a college professor and his clashes with the Catholic Church while trying to develop a “new religion” that represented a Darwinian idea of evolution beyond existing denominations (26). Masaryk is associated most in historiography with the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Berglund elucidates his early years as a different part of his life, when his political success was far in the future, and his focus was on his family and his moral and spiritual growth. The second chapter provides a vivid account of Plečník's Prague years as a solitary and pious Catholic in a mostly secular city. His closest relationships were with his devoted students and a circle of architectural collaborators, most of whom did not share his intense religiosity, but all of whom admired his unquestionable architectural talents. The third chapter brings Alice Garrigue Masaryková into her own as an influential educator and thinker who was the first woman to earn a PhD in history from Charles University. She also spent a year in Chicago working at the settlement houses in 1904 and spent nine months in a Viennese jail during World War I because of her father's “political work” as an exile in Switzerland (140).

With the lives of these three figures and their intersections with religious thinking drawn thoughtfully in the first few chapters, Berglund is able to delve into how these three people were so critical to the formation of Czechoslovakia and identity as an independent, modern, and secular state after 1918. The final four chapters explore these ideas thematically and chronologically. In chapter four, Berglund expounds on how Masaryk constructed his government to oversee what he called “the moral republic” guided by a “civic religion” that was grounded in “a common religious and moral conviction” (149). Chapter five considers the obstacles that made this vision impossible to achieve including the criticisms of prominent figures from political circles and church organizations who did not like his mix of secular and religious thinking. In chapter six, Berglund explains Masaryk's understanding of secularism and why “participation of churches in the moral republic was unwelcome” (241). Masaryk wanted the state to take the place of the church, which was an outdated concept, and take on the provision of social welfare assistance. Thus “religion would be secularized, while the nation-state would be made sacred” (242). The final chapter, entitled “The War of the Absolute,” takes the story into the 1930s when Masaryk is in his eighties. Alice is called upon to shore up his political vision as his health fails and longtime critics continue to attack not only his religiosity but also his presidential record.

Throughout the book, architecture plays a role in reflecting the dialogs between the main protagonists. Prague Castle, a dilapidated complex that required significant upgrading to its infrastructure before it could be the seat of government, is where the three lives of Berglund's protagonists come together in multiple chapters. Plečník was given significant personal autonomy in his design work and was often difficult to work with, so Alice Masaryková was an intermediary and kept the project on track. While Plečník was at work on the castle as the space of the new moral republic, he also built one of Prague's most famous churches, the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart in Vinohrády. Berglund uses the debates about the church to contrast Masaryk's conception of religion and worship with those of Plečník who remained a devout Catholic throughout his life.

This book is a pleasure to read and a rare opportunity to grasp an intellectual moment in history so intimately. Berglund uses his wealth of sources to nuance his interpretations in ways that make the book and its arguments of interest to all scholars of interwar central European culture and politics. If there is a weakness in the project, it would be its insularity to Prague and the Czech intellectual world. As much research shown, Prague was a multilingual and multiethnic city between the wars, and this book never reaches into those other domains. This does not diminish from the quality of the project as it is, it only opens the possibility of further exploration.