Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) was a New England intellectual and activist, preacher, labor organizer, and finally a prolific Catholic writer. He is best remembered as a publicist, a career which spanned his affiliation with the New England Transcendentalists, through his subsequent conversion to Catholicism. In 1822 he became a Presbyterian and in 1824 he became a Universalist, becoming ordained in 1826 and preaching in New York and New England. Later, rejecting Universalism, he became associated with Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright in New York City and supported the New York Workingmen"s Party. Then he became a Unitarian, preaching in Walpole, New Hampshire from 1832 and in Canton, Massachusetts from 1834. Brownson"s writing contributions were political, intellectual, and religious essays. Among these was a review of Thomas Carlyle"s Chartism, separately published as The Laboring Classes (1840), which caused considerable controversy. Also in 1840, he published his...