This edited volume addresses the political exile of Catholic Christian Democrats in Europe and the Americas from the end of the First World War to the end of the Cold War. The eleven essays that comprise this volume are organized into four sections: “Exile in the United Kingdom and the United States 1924–1945; “Exiles from Spain in Western Europe and the Americas 1937–1945”; “Exiles from East-Central Europe in Western Europe and the Americas 1944–1989”; and “Chilean Exile in Western Europe and the Americas 1973–1988.” The authors examine who these Christian Democrats in exile were, their reception in their host country, their political organization, and their programmatic work aimed at advancing Christian democracy in their region/country of origin. This work, the authors conclude, was largely unsuccessful, owing to social isolation. Catholic exiles fleeing Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, and Pinochet's Chile confronted host Catholic communities who sympathized with the regimes which they had fled and local Church hierarchs who looked unfavorably on any criticism of these regimes, which ostensibly advanced a social order that aligned with Church teachings. Even East European Christian Democrats, whose opposition to communism had the support of the Church, were not immune to social isolation, since their circle of contacts was often limited to other political exiles. This isolation did not end when the exiles returned home. In their absence, younger generations of Christian Democrats had developed a cosmopolitan and transnational identity, making the nationalist political agenda of the returning exiles obsolete. Ultimately, dissidents and resistance movement members who stayed at home, rather than the exiles, shaped the transitions to democracy.

Although the exiles failed to shape Christian Democracy from abroad, the transnational networks in which they participated did exercise long-term influence on Catholic political thought and action. By utilizing a transnational and comparative perspective rather than the national or biographical lens adopted by most earlier studies, this meticulously researched study points to the long-term significance of inter-regional exchanges and transfers. For example, the two chapters on Chilean exile demonstrate that the international connections and forms of collaboration, which exiles developed in Europe, facilitated a rapprochement between Christian Democrats and democratic socialists before and during the Chilean transition to democracy. Unfortunately, the book's adherence to a narrow definition of politics—one that confines politics to the activities of political parties, government officials, and lobbyists—limits the authors’ ability to explore transnational negotiations of power at other levels of human interaction, such as the dynamic renegotiation of gender, family, and sexual relations that transformed the global twentieth century. For example, two chapters note the crucial role played by Catholic women affiliated with women's rights organizations in facilitating Luigi Sturzo and Jacques Maritain's activities. Yet neither chapter analyzes how this engagement impacted secular or Catholic gender politics. Similarly, another chapter notes without further explanation generational differences aggravated by changes introduced at Vatican II and by moral degradation. Incorporating these sociocultural changes into this transnational narrative would have significantly expanded the study's scope and audience.