Solid overview of Augustine's life. It places Augustine in history and tells the stories of his personal and religious conflicts. It's a short book and Wills doesn't have the time to drill down deep into some of the major points in his life. Nor does it spend a lot of time on his philosophy and theology. If you want a starting point on Augustine or a summary of his life this book will do just fine.

This is research for a poem I am writing.

After all, what's a greater crowd-pleaser than a Saint Augustine poem?

”Sex is the mere release of slime while rubbing a woman’s innards.” This is about the most interesting statement in the book, and it was said by Marcus Aurelius, not St. Augustine. For devoted Augustine fans or devote Catholics, this might be a fine book, but I found it rather boring. It had little about the 93 books Augustine wrote or about the man’s philosophy. I only hope his 93 books were more interesting than this one.

A good intro to St. Augustine, but takes more time critiquing scholarship on St. Augustine than a penguin introduction should. I agree with most of his critiques, but the way he presents them, especially thinking that this book is directed towards readers who have never read St. Augustine, would make new readers think that Augustine scholars are just crazy and haven't even read him! When the truth is they have...

This is my effort to delve into theology. Because I am going to a lecture by Garry Wills, the subject of which is St. Augustine, I selected this book to educate myself. St Augustine is complicated and I look forward to reading something he wrote.

Very clear, impressive, and academic book. It presents a deep and rich sense of the state of theology, philosophy and the church at that time.

This short, chronological biography focuses more on Augustine's thought and intellectual development than on his life events. It seems that he was one of the great philosophers of world history! Wow, who knew. In searching for answers to the nature of the human will, he also made great strides in the understanding of human psychology.

This is not the introduction to Augustine I was hoping for, it is more of an overview of him and his work with a heavy assumption that you have either read his work before or having a basic understanding of his ideas. I wish it was more accessible to the average person. If I didn't have any background in Christianity and its tenets then I would have been completely lost.

A rather interesting biography, with some very interesting episodes, with nevertheless left me a little muddled on the theological positions held by Augustine and the broad strokes of his life story. In spite of its short length, I felt that the author somehow spent the time in (representative, perhaps) details, and left the broadest outlines a little implicit.

Superficial and quirky (e.g. Una and Godsend, etc.).

Loved this quick look at the meaning of Augustine's life and works. Especially appreciated the ways Wills puts the writer and theologian into context for a modern reader. Carried this book with me all through Florence, and in our neighborhood church, the Chiesa di Ognissanti, saw the original Bottichelli fresco of Saint Augustine in his Study, a reproduction of which graces the cover of my copy of this book.

Intriguing, but definitely not as an introduction to the life of Augustine of Hippo. Much background knowledge on early Christianity and its competing philosophies and sects, such as Manicheism and Donatism, necessary to understand most of the references in this book. Wish it had been more of a straight biographical account of his life, as most of the Penguin series short bios are.

History And Spirit

I read and reviewed Garry Wills' "Saint Augustine" in 2001 and thought about Wills' study after reading Augustine scholar Peter Brown's review of Susan Ruden's new translation of Augustine's "Confessions". (New York Review of Books, October 26, 2017) As I read Brown's review, Ruden's translation attempts to bring the reader closer to the Augustine of his own day, and to the feeling of God as a Master, rather than to read Augustine in the light of modern liberal theology, as Wills tends to do. I learned from Brown's review and hope to have the opportunity to read Ruden's translation. Brown made me think about my 2001 reading of Wills and about other ways of understanding Augustine. The remainder of this review consists of an edited version of my 2001 review of Wills' book.

I read Garry Wills' short biography "Saint Augustine" after reading E.L. Doctorow's novel, "City of God", a book I loved, with the allusion in its title to Augustine's great work. I wanted to learn more about Augustine and to think further about the importance of Augustine to Doctorow's novel. I needed a short book such as Wills' that would expand my limited understanding.

Wills's book presents in a clear, accessible way something of the nature of this complex person, thinker, and theologian. But the book is no mere introduction. It in many ways takes issue with other accounts of Augustine and presents him in a manner that shows why he is worthy of the attention of the modern reader, as he has been of readers throughout the ages.

Wills spends a great deal of space arguing that the title "Confessions" for Augustine's most famous work is inappropriate and retitles the book "Testimony". Wills's point has been made many times before, but in the process Wills does teach the reader something important about Augustine's book. The work is not primarily a confession or an autobiography but a record of a spiritual search. Wills argues that Augustine was not a sexual libertine in his youth and, more importantly for the modern reader, that Augustine was not anti-sexual in his old age. He presents a Christianity that does not despise the body (making the simple point that in Christianity God came to the earth in a body) and that Christianity teaches its adherents to use the body for God's purpose in humility and love. In fact, Wills presents Augustine as correcting the anti-physical bias of pagan ascetics of his day.

In addition to discussing the "Confessions", Wills has valuable things to say about Augustine's "City of God". Wills argues against an other-worldly interpretation of the "City of God" and finds Augustine willing to bring the City to earth in a world believers share with nonbelievers through an early form of toleration, through love, and through common purpose. Wills' interpretation reminded me of Doctorow's picture in his own "City of God" of a secular, diverse, and vibrant contemporary New York City. Thus Wills' book helped me with Augustine and helped me as well in understanding Doctorow's novel.

There is a good, if necessarily brief, description in the book of the closing days of the Roman Empire. This history is in itself worth reading and I had known little about it.

I think somebody coming to Augustine for the first time could benefit from the book and be encouraged to think and learn more. I found it useful. Penguin is to be commended for its biographical series, making important lives accessible to modern readers in brief, but not superficial books.

Robin Friedman