August 1, 1903–March 8, 1995

Paul Horgan was an American Catholic historian and novelist, praised by David McCullough as “a writer of large vision and many-sidedness” with a matchless “command of language and feeling for human nature.”

Author of forty-plus books, including seventeen novels, Horgan received two Pulitzer Prizes (in 1955, for Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History; in 1975, for Lamy of Santa Fe) as well as nineteen honorary degrees and the University of Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal.

Despite their author's stellar reputation, his books remained, in bulk, out of print and unavailable in the decades following his death. In 2023, CLUNY began recovering his books and reintroducing the world to an author with talent worth its weight in gold.