This is, to say the least, an interesting book. Written by Tom McCarthy, the book chronicles the life of Thomas N. McCarthy, Tom McCarthy's father. An initial reaction might be, “hoo, boy, what do we have here?” but this is not a hagiography. Instead, McCarthy details his father's long and winding path from childhood through college and into adulthood. McCarthy senior grew up in the Northeast, primarily in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was raised as a Catholic and graduated from a Catholic high school. Like many of his generation, he enlisted in the military (Navy) as a part of the war effort in World War II. Notably, Tom McCarthy, the son, is a professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The elder McCarthy came back from the war intending to help support his widowed mother, as his father had passed away in 1937. But given the opportunity to go to college with support from his high school mentors and the GI Bill, he enrolled at Catholic University in Washington, DC. It is at this point that the life of Thomas N. McCarthy really begins, as he completes his undergraduate degree, goes on to graduate school, and eventually earns his doctoral degree in counseling psychology. McCarthy senior moves from working as a counselor in Catholic higher education to various positions, eventually becoming the vice president for student affairs at La Salle College (later university) in Philadelphia in the fall of 1969. He continued in upper administration until retirement in 1996.

Using interviews recorded with his father between 2010 and 2018, Tom McCarthy traces numerous patterns in higher education from the 1950s through the 1990s, using the elder McCarthy as a guide to the many challenges and vagaries of the time. The tale of professional and personal experiences is extensive, including his father's challenges wrestling with Catholic oversight of higher education, the ebb and flow of enrollments, and even the time frame in the institutional history of La Salle College when women were first admitted. The story extends from the innovation of the GI Bill, which sent many young men to college in record numbers, to the Kennedy and Johnson years of federal support for higher education, followed by the turmoil of the civil rights era, the Vietnam War, Title IX, and more.

Some aspects of Thomas N. McCarthy's story may be a stretch for those unfamiliar with the theme noted in the book's title, “developing the whole person.” This particular phrase refers to a concept memorialized in a 1937 monograph, The Student Personnel Point of View, published by the American Council on Education (ACE). The term student personnel was created by Walter Dill Scott, president of Northwestern University in the early 1920s. Scott earned his PhD in Germany under Wilhelm Wertz, who created applied psychology. On his return to the United States., Scott formed the Scott Company, a lucrative agency that consulted with business and industry using applied personnel psychology. When Scott returned to his undergraduate alma mater, Northwestern, as president, he incorporated the concepts of applied personnel psychology, referring to work with students as “student personnel” psychology, a term that stuck. The ACE monograph followed this professional movement, detailing the need to educate the whole student, not just the intellect but the affective side (feelings, emotions) of students as well. To a large extent, the emerging move to help develop students’ affective side was seen as the province of student personnel professionals, a group that included Thomas N. McCarthy.

One of the sixteen members of the ACE committee that wrote the Student Personnel Point of View was E. G. Williamson of the University of Minnesota. Williamson served both as a faculty member and later dean of students. He was a strong proponent of using applied psychology with college students. The elder McCarthy became a disciple in his own right and it infused his work at La Salle, first in the Counseling Center, then in his psychology classes, and later as a vice president for student affairs. McCarthy even hosted Williamson on the La Salle campus. McCarthy's use of student personnel concepts to develop the “whole student” pervaded his work, which at times put him at odds with his colleagues, some faculty, and, of course, the Catholic administrators he worked under. From the ten years of recorded interviews, Tom McCarthy provides the reader with extensive and, at times, minute detail about the challenges his father faced over time.

There are few, if any, biographies of men like Thomas N. McCarthy who served as a higher education faculty member and administrator across the decades of the twentieth century after WW II. It is a detailed biography with good insights into the challenges and quandaries the elder McCarthy faced. However, the story is so intimate and so centered on one individual, it is limited in generalizability to others in similar positions. Even more unique is the context of Catholicism and the “heavy hand” of Catholic oversight of the institutions where McCarthy worked. While of keen interest to some—the late Les Goodchild, who was a Catholic higher education historian, comes to mind—for a general audience, it may be a bit too much, as the book scans a narrow slice of the history of higher education over a fifty-year span.

Nonetheless, it is an interesting journey and a solid biographical sketch. There are some inaccuracies, most notably in the introduction. The author mistakenly attributes the student personnel movement and the ACE monograph to the American College Personnel Association. But for the most part, the content is well written and excessively thorough. It is a fine tribute to a father and a dedicated higher education professional. We should all wish for such dutiful offspring!