The Duty of Delight The Diaries of Dorothy Day

For almost fifty years, through her tireless service to the poor and her courageous witness for peace, Dorothy Day offered an example of the gospel in action. Now the publication of her diaries, previously sealed for twenty-five years after her death, offers a uniquely intimate portrait of her struggles and concerns. Beginning in 1934 and ending in 1980, these diaries reflect her response to the vast changes in America, 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. A story of faithful striving for holiness and the radical transformation of the world, Day's life challenges readers to imagine what it would be like to live as if the gospels were true. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980) was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert. In 1933, with Peter Maurin, she established the Catholic Worker, creating a community dedicated to direct aid for the poor and homeless, solidarity with the dispossessed, and social change. Day participated in the labor struggles of the 1930s, the Civil Rights movement, and nonviolent, pacifist opposition to WWII, Vietnam and Cold War militarism, and her cause for canonization is open in the Catholic Church.

Robert Ellsberg was part of the Catholic Worker community in New York City for the last five years of Dorothy Day’s life (1975-80), and served for two years as managing editor of The Catholic Worker. He has also edited Dorothy Day: Selected Writings and All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day, and is the author of All Saints.