True Fire: Saint Augustine in Our Age of Crisis

The Costa Prize Book of the Year–winning biographer gives us a St. Augustine for our time: fresh, urgent, tackling big questions about faith and sin, sex, redemption, just war, and the fiery fall of Rome.

Augustine is a Berber, newly arrived in Italy from North Africa, but he feels entirely Roman. He moves confidently through the marble-columned halls of palaces. Sometimes he worries that the success he craves—applause, wealth, the esteem of clever people—may not be worth it. He works obsess...