Dreadful Conversions

For more than 50 years, John Cort has been at the center of most of the social movements of our time. Writer, reporter, teacher, activist, Cort has spent his life fighting good fights, whether on a Boston newspaper, with the Peace Corps in the Philippines, as a labor leader, or in dozens of campaigns for justice, peace and human rights. Here is John Cort's story--the measure of an exemplary life and a vivid, personal chronicle of American radicalism across virtually every major struggle. At its heart, this is also the story of what it means to take seriously the distinctively radical Catholic vision that informs American political and religious life in this century. It started in 1935, when Cort converted to Catholicism as a Harvard undergraduate. A year later, he was in New York City on the staff of the Catholic Worker, working with such legendary figures as Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Plunged into the class wars of the Depression, Cort began a 20-year commitment to organizing workers, notably through the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists. Later, Cort served many social action causes while continuing to teach, report, and write. Whether running a model Cities program, a newspaper guild, or a homeless shelter, or as a delegate to a world apostolic congress, Cort brought to life in his radicalism and his socialism the teachings of Catholic activism embodied most vividly by Dorothy Day and John XIII. Desperate Conversions is a unique primer in Catholic social theory, told in the chapters of John Cort's own life. Quirky, personal, distinctive, his memoir captures one of the great stories of our American century--and tells it in a voice no one can forget.