"This extraordinary guide to American converts shows just how many roads lead to Rome. John Beaumont’s book The Mississippi Flows into the Tiber is an impressive feat, and an invaluable tool for arguing with atheists. … The important thing to say about such a massive work of reference is that it is much more than that: Beaumont has deliberately included long passages, either written by the converts themselves or by their biographers, which are inspiring essays in their own right. There are as many different reasons for joining the Church (or obstacles holding one back) as there are individuals; some of these essays provide excellent material for arguments about the faith one might have with sceptical friends. For this reason the book is invaluable, encompassing as it does an extraordinary range of different characters, with all their human flaws and yet who have all been touched by the grace of conversion. This is not a work of hagiography; Catholic converts are sinners, not saints, some of them spectacularly so. In these pages you will find the notorious mobster, Dutch Schultz, as well as Ernest Hemingway, who married four times and who finally committed suicide. … Clearly, there is nothing as fascinating as the lives of other people – especially when it concerns something as personal as the journey of the soul."