Biography and History

Pierre Toussaint: A Biography

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This is the remarkable true story of Pierre Toussaint (c.1781-1853), a slave who gained his freedom and became a well-known high-society hairstylist in New York City. A devout Catholic, Toussaint worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor and oppressed. At the time of his death, he was hailed as New York’s leading black citizen. Now, he is now a candidate for sainthood.

Toussaint was born on the island of Haiti, on a plantation owned by the Bérards, a prosperous French family, who raised him as a Catholic. When the Bérards fled to New York in 1797 during a slave uprising, they took Toussaint with them as a servant. New York held its own dangers: anti-Catholic sentiment was high and African-Americans were beaten on the streets. But Toussaint began to earn a substantial income as a hairdresser to upper-class women, including Alexander Hamilton’s wife, a profession he continued after gaining his freedom in 1807. Moving in the higher echelons of society, Toussaint was reputed to know everything that went on in the city.

In the first biography written for a mainstream audience, Arthur Jones draws on letters from Toussaint’s friends and admirers, both black and white. They praised him equally for his charming, refined manners and for his exemplary charity work: caring for the poor, helping former slaves, and raising funds for New York’s first Catholic cathedral. Toussaint was supported in this work by his wife, Juliette Gaston, a slave whose freedom he had purchased.

In recognition of Toussaint’s charity work, in 1996, the Catholic Church declared him ‘Venerable’, the second step toward sainthood. Although Toussaint experienced poverty and prejudice, he found strength in his religious faith, his independence of mind, and his sense of personal dignity. In defying the strictures of a racist society, Toussaint became a symbol of hope for oppressed and maligned people of all backgrounds.

Review: “A well-written and well-researched biography of a 19th-century ex-slave who managed to live a rich and faith-filled life of extraordinary service within the confines of a city and community racially divided and socially constricted. Jones has given us a good look at the historical context in which this authentically holy man managed to avoid the pitfalls and traps that lay in wait for every antebellum black. A successful businessman who owned his own home, he was at the same time a philanthropist, a social worker and a man of God. Jones’s book enters into the very mind and spirit of this independent and original man.” – Cyprian Davis, America Magazine

Review: “Coping with war, racism and changing coiffures with equal aplomb, Toussaint was stylist and confidant to the city’s richest women (he numbered Alexander Hamilton’s wife and granddaughter among his clients), becoming both a fixture in white society and a pillar of the black and Catholic communities. Through this sociologically fascinating figure, Jones … explores the economy and society of pre-revolutionary Haiti and early Republican New York, the culture of Caribbean-French expatriates, and the racial and ethnic tensions within the American Catholic Church.” – Publishers Weekly

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Cover of 'Boomer Guru: M. Scott Peck' by Arthur Jones — Boomer Guru (North American edition, 2015)

Cover of 'The Road He Travelled: The Revealing Biography of M. Scott Peck' by Arthur Jones (UK edition, 2007) — The Road He Travelled (UK edition, 2007)

Boomer Guru: How M. Scott Peck Guided Millions but Lost Himself on the Road Less Traveled

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This biography of “the nation’s shrink” is that rare account: a psychiatrist on the couch. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of women wrote to psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, MD, to thank him for helping them find fresh meaning in their lives through his ground-breaking self-help book, The Road Less Traveled (1978), which spent more than a decade on the New York Times Best Seller List. Through his workshops, appearances on Oprah and elsewhere, and because he was a psychiatrist, Peck made self-help respectable for a wide-ranging audience.

Yet his own life was in turmoil. A classic wounded healer and something of a control freak, Peck made life difficult for his family, not least by his extramarital affairs.

Boomer Guru explores Peck’s dichotomy in a deeply researched biography based primarily on hours of recorded interviews with the frank but conflicted guru. Peck’s The Road Less Traveled had more than 10 million “boomer” readers. This candid biography of the boomer guru is an intriguing recap both of the times and the man.

Review: “I would recommend the book if you are fascinated by Peck and want to learn much in the way of background information about this fascinating 20th century figure.” — Robert L. Clasen on Amazon.com

Read the introduction and chapter 1 on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

Download free study guide for book clubs and workshops

The National Catholic Reporter at Fifty: The Story of the Pioneering Paper and Its Editors

An independent, award-winning, lay-run newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri, the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) has been a powerful progressive voice in the Catholic Church. Its investigative approach to the Church and its activities at the national and international levels altered forever how journalists would report on the secretive organisation.

Founded in 1964 during the Second Vatican Council, NCR has broken a number of challenging stories. It was the first to report the nationwide clerical pedophilia crisis. It published the secret Papal Birth Control Commission report that recommended ending the ban on birth control, which Pope Paul VI vetoed.

This book covers the highs and lows in NCR’s history, with a focus on its important editors and key themes: race and poverty, peace/foreign policy, women’s issues, sexuality, and the church/papacy. The biographies reveal how individual editors’ backgrounds shaped their approaches to their editorship.

Review: “This book could be called ‘Fifty years of scoops,’ as it is about the history of the paper that revealed the findings of the secret papal birth control commission Pope Paul VI overrode in 1968 and that broke the story of priestly sex abuse scandals 15 years ahead of the Boston Globe. When in the 90s, it uncovered the story of African nuns raped by priests ‘looking for AIDS-free sex,’ as Jones says, ‘it was NCR that carried yet another story no one wanted to hear, and none could ignore.’

“Of course, NCR is so much more than the sum of its many exclusives, founded during the Second Vatican Council and defending the spirit of the council in the five decades since. These days, no one covers our church better, and Arthur Jones tells us how that happened; all it took, it turns out, was 50 years of faith, love, work, and … fearlessness.” — Melinda Henneberger, Washington Post

Review: “Over the last fifty years, many of us have often said ‘thank God for NCR!’ What would we have known about our Church, and about many issues in public policy, without NCR‘s help? Arthur Jones helps us celebrate this remarkable half century of American Catholic life with a lively, interesting, intelligent ‘personal story — the inside story told by an insider who cares.’ Jones cares about the paper and its people, and he cares too about the good causes they have tried to serve and helped us to serve.” — David O’Brien, professor emeritus, College of the Holy Cross

Hardcover and eBook: 2014, Rowman and Littlefield, 312 pages, ISBN: 9781442236110 (hardback), 9781442236127 (eBook)

Notre Dame Magazine, August 2003, cover — Notre Dame Magazine’s August 2003 issue: cover illustration by Ken Orvidas

Literary Scamp Evelyn Waugh

Article: Notre Dame Magazine, August 2003 (free to read online)

In the late 1940s, Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh, the author of Brideshead Revisited, was desperate for a respite from the rationing and privation of post-war England – and from his five children, all under eleven. He convinced Life magazine to publish his report of a two-month tour of the United States during the winter of 1948-49.

Jones’s article describes how Waugh went about getting someone else to cover the costs of his first-class ocean-liner ticket to the U.S. and his luxurious journeying while there. And how he even had other people do most of the research for him.

For this article, Jones contacted the Catholic colleges where Waugh spoke, but only at the University of Notre Dame did he find someone who had attended Waugh’s presentation – the President, Father Ted Hesburgh. Jones also read the Waugh papers at the University of Texas and contacted an American family the Waughs were close to. Following a major conference on Evelyn Waugh at Loyola University Maryland, at which he presented a paper (March 2012), Jones gave his own collection of Waugh first editions, photographs, and correspondence to Loyola University Library’s special collections.

Malcolm Forbes: Peripatetic Millionaire

Malcolm Forbes became a multimillionaire because of Forbes magazine, the authoritative business/finance magazine that he owned. And he spent his profits as quickly as he reaped them: an island in Fiji, Zane Grey’s old fishing camp in Tahiti, a palace in Tangiers, a chateau in Normandy, a ranch in Colorado, townhouses in London and New York, Faberge jewelry, yachts, motorcyles, and hot air balloons.

The magazine was founded by his father, Bertie Charles “BC” Forbes, at one time William Randolph Hearst’s highest-paid financial columnist. But Malcolm Forbes did not inherit a fortune – he inherited a struggling publication. In under thirty years, he turned Forbes into a major moneymaker. How the magazine grew, why it grew, and the fun Malcolm Forbes, a modern-day adventurer, had along the way are told in this biography.