Augustine of Hippo

Augustine's Confessions is an extraordinary book, but it is not always an easy one! Readers looking for help in understanding its brilliant author can do no better than to turn to Peter Brown's biography, first published in 1967. It is a beautifully written, lucid, and illuminating study of Augustine's life and thought, the best possible guide to both the man and his world. In an Epilogue added for the forty-fifth-anniversary edition, Brown discusses what he and other scholars have learned in the decades since he first wrote the book, and how his ideas about Augustine have changed, demonstrating the curiosity… show more.

Saint Augustine is probably the one figure in the history of early Christianity that modern readers, of any faith or no faith at all, need to know about, and no one knows more about this fifth-century Catholic bishop and theologian than the author of this book. A Princeton professor, Brown is one of the world’s foremost historians of Christianity in the ancient world and his research is formidable, but he writes with remarkable elegance and ease. There’s a great openness in all his work, but especially in this biography, to the needs of any curious, educated reader – believer, skeptic,… show more.