Hold Nothing Back: Writings by Dorothy Day - Paperback

by Patrick Jordan (Author), Kate Hennessy (Foreword by)

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a well-known American journalist, activist, and Catholic convert whose cause for sainthood has been endorsed by the US bishops. She wrote numerous articles over a period of several decades for the prominent lay Catholic magazine Commonweal. Hold Nothing Back is gleaned from those writings. It includes reflections on her life as a single mother, her time in jail for civil disobedience, her struggles to keep the Catholic Worker movement she cofounded afloat, and her travels on crowded buses to report from the front lines about labor disputes, racial inequality, and poverty. At the heart of whatever Day wrote lies a profound and prophetic faith. Hold Nothing Back--a new, abridged edition of the previously published Dorothy Day: Writings from Commonweal--gives a glimpse of her remarkable humanity and endurance, and of the vibrant spirituality that underlay them.

Author Biography

Patrick Jordan (1944 - 2025) served as the former managing editor of The Catholic Worker. He and his wife Kathleen were associated with Dorothy Day from 1968 until her death in 1980. From 1984 to 2012, Jordan was an editor at Commonweal magazine. He is the author of Hold Nothing Back: Writings by Dorothy Day, and Dorothy Day: Love in Action; and served as editor of Dorothy Day: Writings from Commonweal, and Only Wonder Comprehends: John Garvey in Commonweal, published by Liturgical Press. He served on the advisory board of the Dorothy Day Guild.