RaveThe Wall Street JournalHer carefully researched biography is a fitting tribute to her late friend and one that will enlighten both specialists and non-specialists alike ... Ms. Haven’s ability to interweave Girard’s life with his publications keeps her narrative flowing at a lively pace. For a man who woke every day at 3:30 a.m. and wrote until his professorial duties took over, it would be enough for any biographer to focus on his intellectual life, without linking his thoughts to a person ambulating in the world. Fortunately, Ms. Haven portrays Girard as he interacted with colleagues, students, friends and family ... The chapter Ms. Haven devotes to a major conference organized by Girard and his [Johns] Hopkins associates in 1966 reads like an uproarious movie script featuring the oversize egos of the all-male cast, most notably the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Even as Girard negotiated the politics of American academe and international rivalries, he drew strength from his Catholic faith. Ms. Haven sympathetically recounts his conversion experiences in 1958 and 1959. At a time when atheism was practically de rigueur among French intellectuals, Girard came out not only as a believer but also as a spokesman for what he called the \'truths of Christianity.\'
