Winner of The 2018 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award In The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870, Thomas O'Flynn vividly paints the life and times of missionary enterprises in early nineteenth-century Russia and Persia at a moment of immense change when Tsarist Russia embarked on an expansionist campaign reaching to the Caucasus. Simultaneously he charts the relationship between the new Persian dynasty of the Qājārs and missionary activity on the part of European and American missionaries. This book reconstructs that world from a predominantly religious perspective. It recounts the sustaining ideals as well as the everyday struggles of the western missionaries, Protestant (Scottish, Basel and American Congregationalist) and Catholic (Jesuit and Vincentian). It looks at the reactions of diverse tribal peoples, the Tatars of the North Caucasus, the Kabardians and Circassians. Persia was the ultimate goal of these missionaries, which they eventually reached in the 1820s. Altogether this study throws light on the troubled course of history in West Asia and provides the background to politico-religious conflicts in Chechnya and Persia that persist to the present day.

The story of the one hundred years (19182018) of the Missionary Society of St. Columban is filled with adventure, stress, and danger, with the humdrum of daily life, with martyrs (twenty-seven of them thus far, including Columban Sister Joan Sawyer), with innumerable personal and society global connections and issues, with men who went from the familiarity of daily life and people they knew to lands and people unknown to bring the good news. The story is charged with humor and courage, along with faith, hope, and love. The people in this story lived within particular national histories and an evolving global Christianity. The history of the US region of the Missionary Society of St. Columban interacts with movements of Catholic and American history. These contexts influenced the ability of the Columbans to grow in the United States, to provide desperately needed resources for the missions, and to further Catholic engagement in the mission.

Cattle Plague: A History is divided into five sections, dealing with the nature of the virus, followed by a chronological history of its occurrence in Europe from the Roman Empire to the final 20th century outbreaks; then administrative control measures through legislation, the principal players from the 18th century, followed by an analysis of some effects, political, economic and social. Then follows attempts at cure from earliest times encompassing superstition and witchcraft, largely Roman methods persisting until the 19th century; the search for a cure through inoculation and the final breakthrough in Africa at the end of the 19th century. The last section covers the disease in Asia and Africa. Appendices cover regulations now in force to control the disease as well as historical instructions, decrees and statutes dating from 1745-1878.