The years between the two terrible World Wars bore witness to a revival in hagiography: numerous bestselling books took as their topic or inspiration the life of a saint. In the wake of these book-length treatments of God’s elect there followed “shorter sketches of saints, of the same decent reality, appearing here, there and everywhere.” As a collector of these studies in sanctity, no one was (and is) better qualified than F. J. Sheed. Bearing witness to the veracity of the Salesian mantra, “A sad saint would be a sorry saint,” Saints Are Not Sad boasts an assembly of thirty-four saints, beginning with the fiery heroism of St. Paul and concluding with le petite voie of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, presented by such luminaries of twentieth-century Catholic letters as G. K. Chesterton and Alice Curtayne, R. H. J. Steuart and Ida Coudenhove, Vincent McNabb and C. C. Martindale.

An encounter with the saints, writes Sheed in his introductory note, offers a twofold benefit of relief from monotony and contact with vitality. The enduring value of Saints Are Not Sad is that it offers such an encounter both marvelously and manywise.