Brownson and his work have engaged so many able minds, both in his own time and today, that his comparative neglect for over sixty years after his death is at least a minor conundrum in American intellectual history. Philosopher, theologian, economist, political scientist, literary critic, historian, his polymathic range is as astonishing as it is rare. Few, if any, significant American thinkers or doers were unaware of him in his own time, nor was his work neglected in Europe. He knew--either personally or through his work or correspondence--the Emersons, the Ripleys, the Thoreaus, the Bancrofts, Poe, Lowell, Whitman, the Lord Actons, Montalembert, Donoso Cortes, as they knew and respected him; he was an American expert on the work of Immanuel Kant. He worked his way through the efforts of each; when he mistook the efforts of any (and he did), his error was the unintended wound of method...