Theodore Maynard (1890–1956)

... Mr Maynard's lively book tells as much as is known of the story of the most interesting of Pisarro's captains. ... De Soto himself seems to have been among the most modern of the Spanish conquerors. He definitely disapproved of wholesale slaughter if unnecessary, though he did not mind giving Indians to be torn to pieces by dogs. Further, when the Indians took him for a God, he preached to them and set up a cross for them, but he does not seem to have felt the incongruity between his occasional missionary enterprise and the possession of three native wives at once, besides a Spanish one waiting for his return to Cuba from the mainland.

Arthur Ransome in The Observer, 17 Aug. 1930, reproduced in Christina Hardyment, Ransome on blue water sailing (1999), pp. 62-64.… (más)

First and only book I've read of St. Philip Neri, so I'm not sure if others are better. However, this one covers his life in detail enough to have encouraged me to love this saint all the more! I did not realize he was a hermit for around 18 years--a hermit of the streets, in Rome. So this detail was of benefit, in itself. I also appreciated learning about his unique personality, his fearlessness to be himself in Christ, and his tremendous, unabashed sense of humor--a kind of eccentricity that most would try to squelch in themselves. But he lived who he was in the Lord and did not concern himself with others' criticism or praise.… (más)

3938. The Reed and the Rock: Portrait of Simon Brute, by Theodore Maynard (read 19 Sept 2004) The author of this book was one I had heard of since my youth, but I appear never to have read anything by him. This is a 1942 account of the life story of Simon Brute, born in France in 1779 and ordained in 1808. He came to the US in 1810 and was at Mount St. Mary's in Emmitsburg, MD, and at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore till appointed in 1835 as first bishop of Vincennes, Indiana. Though an odd and seemingly impractical saintly scholar before he became a bishop he did a good and heroic job as bishop till he died June 26, 1839. The book is hagiographical but pleasant to read and quite caught me up even though it has practically no 'scholarly apparatus'.… (más)

4087 A Fire Was Lighted The Life of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, by Theodore Maynard (read 3 Nov 2005) It was on 11 Mar 1981 that I read James Mellow's biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne and first heard of his daughter Rose, who in 1891 became a Catholic and in 1898 founded a Dominican community devoted to the free care of people hopelessly ill of cancer. She lived till 1926 and her community still exists, devoted to the same good work. This 1948 account of her life is well-told and inspiring, though maybe a bit too hagiographical. But worth reading.… (más)