The author takes the major elements of St. Gregory’s second book of the Dialogues (the Life of St. Benedict), the major elements of the Rule, the monastic vow, the 1,500 years of Benedictine history, and adds historical or explanatory material — creating a book on the life and times of St. Benedict, the Rule, and later Benedictine monasticism that is interesting and very readable. A very good overivew in 295 pages.

The copy of the book I am reading has notes written by a previous reader who apparently also knew much of the material already and who knew Latin and Greek. The previous reader apparently thought that some of the author’s statements lacked needed precision or were ambiguous, but in general this previous reader (who I imagine read the book in the 1940s) thought the vast majority of the book contained excellent material — there are frequent little check marks on the pages beside key statements or conclusions.

At the rear fly-leaves comes newspaper tributes of Fr McCann's death in 1959, and also a penned note by the author saying that this book was a revision of that of 1937.