Books by Leslie Woodcock Tentler

"This comprehensive survey of Catholic history in what became the United States spans nearly five hundred years, from the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries to the present. Distinguished historian Leslie Tentler explores lay religious practice and the impact of clergy on Catholic life and culture as she seeks to answer the question, What did it mean to be a "good Catholic" at particular times and in particular places? In its focus on Catholics' participation in American politics and Catholic intellectual life, this book includes in-depth discussions of Catholics, race, and the Civil War; Catholics and public life in the twentieth century; and Catholic education and intellectual life. Shedding light on topics of recent interest such as the role of Catholic women in parish and community life, Catholic reproductive ethics regarding birth control, and the Catholic church sex abuse crisis, this engaging history provides an up-to-date account of the history of American Catholicism."--

Presents a history of the Catholic Church and community in southern lower Michigan from the 1830s to the 1950s. More than a chronicle of clerical successions and institutional expansion, the book also examines those social and cultural influences that affected the development of the Catholic community.

With the first generations of wage-earning women, precedents were established that still operate in today's workforce. An understanding of the early decades of this century is thus essential for women's studies, labor history, and sociology. Writing with a keen eye for detail as well as a real empathy with these women, Leslie Tentler reconstructs the day-to-day realities of life on the job, in the home and in the industrial neighborhoods of major cities. In doing so, she explores the myth that jobs outside the home for this generation led to women's emancipation.

As Americans rethought sex in the twentieth century, the Catholic Church's teachings on the divisive issue of contraception in marriage were in many ways central. In a fascinating history, Leslie Woodcock Tentler traces changing attitudes: from the...