In this detailed and provocative study, Francis Bethel examines the life and thought of cultural critic, university professor, and sometime cowboy, John Senior (1923 1999). A privileged young man who studied the occult but became a leading proponent of traditional wisdom and arts (eventually converting to the Catholic Faith), Senior, unlike many of even his conservative peers, argued for something more than mere book learning. He championed the full restoration of realism, in which would be brought together the whole man senses, imagination, emotion, will, intellect, and body. Bethel uncovers the roots of Senior's thought, traces its provocative application, and reveals the possibilities it offers today to an academy wounded by pervasive moral and intellectual relativism, the loss of public credibility, and spiraling costs. FRANCIS BETHEL, O.S.B. is a native of Wichita, Kansas. He attended the University of Kansas from 1971 to 1974, where he studied under John Senior and his colleagues, Dennis Quinn and Frank Nelick. In 1975, Bethel entered the French Benedictine Abbey Notre Dame de Fontgombault, where he made his vows as a Benedictine monk in 1977 and was ordained a priest in 1983. In 1999 he returned to the United States and was among the founders of the Benedictine monastery of Our Lady of Clear Creek in Hulbert, Oklahoma. Fr. Bethel serves as Prior of that monastery (now an Abbey), as well as the Master of Novices and the Master of Oblates. Within the monastery he teaches Dogmatic Theology.