Catholicism is and has been one of the most diverse religious communities in the United States. United in a single global religious community, Catholics brought to this country a great variety of languages, cultures, specific religious traditions and practices, religious orders of men and women, and intellectual and theological traditions. They moved with the country into all the states and territories of the union. They are and have been the poor, the middle-class, and the wealthy; and through their free-will offerings, they built hundreds and thousands of churches, hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, and social service agencies. They have influenced the dominant American culture and have been influenced by it throughout the various periods of American history. Dealing with the diversity within the Catholic community, the complexities of the historical changes, and the variety of experiences becomes a daunting task for the historian of American Catholicism.

Historians must make choices in telling the story of American Catholicism, and Leslie Woodcock Tentler has done that and has skillfully met the challenge as a social historian. American Catholics focuses throughout on lay religion in all its variety and on the priests and women religious who have influenced lay religious practices and experiences. Tentler's study describes and analyzes (more thoroughly than any previous general history of American Catholicism) lay religious life, the American priesthood, and the role of women and women religious.

These themes recur in the five major sections of Tentler's history. The first section, “On the Fringes of Empire,” covers a period from the sixteenth to the eighteen centuries, focusing on the Spanish explorers and missions in the South, Southwest, and California; the French on the northern borders and the Mississippi valley; and the British Catholics in the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. The second section, “Growing with the Nation, 1815–1870,” traces the first major wave of immigration and the Catholic movement into the western frontiers as well as the development of Catholicism in its urban stronghold and its participation in slavery and the Civil War. Section 3, “A Turbulent Passage, 1871–1919,” deals with the second wave of immigration, the institutional developments prior to and during World War I, the increased diversity within the Catholic community, and the ideological and cultural conflicts that arose within the church over Modernism and Americanism.

Section 4, “Exuberant Maturity, 1920–1962,” describes the big-city bishops’ consolidation and centralization of ecclesiastical authority after the immigration restriction laws of the 1920s; the sacramental and devotional life in the parishes; the emergence of the birth control debate; the increasing importance of Catholic schools, colleges, and universities; the debates over Catholic intellectual life; and the increasing role of Catholics in the political and social life of the nation. The fifth section, “A World Unbounded, 1963–2015,” delineates the theological and religious transformations of Vatican II (1962–1965), the revolutionary social changes of the 1960s, and the major consequences for Catholics: internal divisions and tensions over the implementation of the conciliar reforms, birth control, and conflicting responses to the cultural wars—all of which, among other things, produced new ways of being Catholic, a declining participation in religious services, and the closing of many religious institutions.

What makes this social history available to a wide-reading audience is Tentler's attention to the stories of particular individuals and not just to general social and religious changes. In fact, each section of the book is headed by a brief profile of a prominent Catholic whose life illustrates major themes in the section under consideration. The Austrian Jesuit missionary and explorer Eusebio Kino (1645–1711) headlines the section on Catholic missionary work. The Italian Dominican Samuel Mazzuchelli (1806–1864) illustrates the struggles and challenges that Catholics met during the westward movement. The Italian Mother Frances Cabrini (1850–1917) demonstrates in general the role of women religious in building institutions and serving the social and religious needs of the new immigrants (especially Italians in her case) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The layman John C. Cort (1913–2006), a Harvard graduate, convert to Catholicism during the Great Depression, and later in life a Catholic socialist, represents in general the appeal of Catholicism to Americans raised outside of the Catholic Church and the role that Catholic social justice played in the post-1920s era. The lay woman Patricia Caron Crowley (1913–2005) is the headliner for the Vatican II and post-conciliar era. She and her husband, Patrick, lay advisors in 1965 to the Pontifical Commission on Population, Births, and the Family, were part of the majority on the Commission who recommended, unsuccessfully, a change in the church's teaching on birth control. Patty Crowley represented the role of lay women in American Catholicism but also the upheaval over birth control and other contentious issues that divided Catholics in the post-Vatican II era.

One of the substantial benefits of this social history is the inclusion of lay religious experiences and behaviors, attention to priests who served them, and especially consideration of lay women and women religious—all of whom have not been given adequate voice in previous histories of American Catholicism. One of the weaknesses, at least for one who is interested in theology, is the lack of sufficient attention to what was preached and taught, what were the grounds given for the teachings, and what in fact people believed.

Nonetheless, Tentler accomplished superbly what she set out to do in this history, and she did it by telling a very readable story of the lives of ordinary Catholics in the various stages of cultural, social, and religious changes in society and in the church. Because of its focus and its attention to representative individual experiences, this history will be valuable for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for the general reading public. I recommend it highly.