Beginning in 1934 and ending in 1980, these diaries reflect Dorothy Day's response to the vast changes in the United States, the Church, and the wider world. Day experienced most of the great social movements of her time, but as these diaries reveal, even while she labored for a transformed world she simultaneously remained grounded in everyday human life: the demands of her extended Catholic Worker family, her struggles to be more patient and charitable, the discipline of prayer and worship that structured her days, her efforts to find God in all the tasks and encounters of daily life.

This compilation of Dorothy's diaries gives a great insight to the wanders of her mind and psyche as she went about the business of helping others. However, as a faithful reproduction of her diaries, it is not a suitable introduction to her life or her works. This would be a perfect companion to a biography of her. ( )

Really needs to be read AFTER reading a biography (I recommend Jim Forest's All is Grace). ( )

I was looking forward to reading this, because I've always been very interested in Dorothy Day and wanted to learn more about her. This book is an edited version of her diary, from the mid 1930s up to her death in 1980.

It shows her immensely strong belief that every person is created in God's image, and her work towards treating all of them as such. "You love God only as much as the person you love the least," as she once famously put it. This was the philosophy that led her to co-found the Catholic Worker Movement, and the diary shows her constant struggle to live up to this very difficult ideal. The Catholic Workers were a highly eccentric group of people living in very close quarters, with Day trying to raise her daughter in the midst of all the chaos.

Her diary, at over 700 pages, can be very repetitive, but it still highlights what a remarkable, saintly person she was. ( )

From the time I first learned about Dorothy Day in a history class, I have been taken by her story. I had never actually read any of her memoirs, but this edition of her diaries was an amazing read. It was fascinating to read her thoughts over the decades of her involvement in the Catholic Worker movement, and read as she dealt with the shortcomings of those around her, and herself. This volume gave insight into the personal theology and mentality of a Servant of God that I don't believe a memoir published during her lifetime could. I would have loved if this book included her diaries from the years before and around her conversion, and her first encounters with Peter Maurin; I wonder if the diaries from these years are lost, or if Day just didn't want them to be published.

I read this volume from cover to cover, and feel that was a much more fulfilling exercise than just picking out passages would be. Yes, it is lengthy. I can see why some of the passages would seem needless when taken out of the context of the entire book, but when in their place, they add invaluable depth to the dailiness of Day's life. We tend to think of individuals like herself as being on some sort of a pedestal, always thinking just about God and her movement. The reality was that she visited her daughter and grandchildren, complained about the weather, battled ill health. These everyday moments give a sense of realness to this volume that would not be present in one that had been edited down to just the passages relating to religion and the CW.

Small, small qualms: I would have loved a "character guide" as an appendix; so many individuals came in and out of her life, and while they were always introduced with a helpful footnote by Ellsberg, their reappearances rarely were annotated with a summary of who they were. In such a lengthy volume, I found it difficult to keep everyone straight. I would have also liked if the current year was indicated on each page, instead of just the decade. ( )