St. Dominic's Family: Over 300 Famous Dominicans

To be asked to write your family history is a work not many authors with
family pride could resist, but whether it would be readable by any but
equally proud members of the family is yet another thing. There is no task
more booby-trapped. When loyalty, enthusiasm, and dedication set to work
on family lore, tradition, and history, and when the family tree reaches back
almost eight hundred years, heaven help everybody!
That Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, O.P., has nimbly danced her way througheight hundred years—less a few—of Dominicans, has avoided every one of
the pitfalls and produced a collection of "lives" which is not only
informative but entirely delightful, is a tribute to her balance as a scholar,
her discernment as a woman, and her integrity as a Dominican. Talent, a
sense of humor, and above all a mastery of the art of understatement (and
where is the temptation to overstate greater than when writing of one's
favorite relatives?) enhance every page of her work which, one soon
discovers, it is not easy to put down.
Drawing from every available source in the history of her Order, SisterMary Jean has culled facts and distributed emphases with the hand of an
expert. Her 339 little biographies sparkle with judiciously chosen details,
highlights, and decorations.