A History of Georgetown University, Vol. 1: From Academy to University, 1789-1889; Vol. 2: The Quest for Excellence, 1889-1964; Vol. 3: The Rise to Prominence, 1964-1989. By Robert Emmett Curran. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 2010. Vol. 1: pp. xix, 476, ISBN 978-1-589-01 688-0; Vol. 2: xix, 476, ISBN 978-1-589-01 689-7; Vol. 3: xix, 348, ISBN 978-1-589-01690-3- $39.95 each volume; $119.95 boxed three-volume set, ISBN 978-1-589-01691-0 for set.) Robert Emmett Curran's three-volume history of Georgetown University is a magnum opus that reflects credit on both subject and author. Lavishly and copiously illustrated, these volumes appear in a large format (8 X 10-inch pages) and are handsomely boxed. The full text runs to 1328 pages, including more than 200 pages of appendices, notes, and bibliographies. Thoroughly researched and meticulously presented, this history of Georgetown University sets a high standard as definitive scholarly account of oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in United States. It is a complex institution and a multifaceted story that Curran introduces with a preface that successfully lays out general organization and structure of three volumes. The first volume, presenting first century, was published separately in 1993 and has been slightly revised (reviewed by Philip Gleason, ante, 81 [1995], 103-05). Gleason drew attention to rich database that disclosed demographic characteristics of students and alumni as well as described the uncertain, up-and-down rockiness of Georgetown's development, and . . . crucial role of individual leaders in moving it ahead (p. 104). Those patterns of irregular progress and uneven leadership were to persist during Georgetown's second century. The second volume, covering 1889 to 1964, is divided into three parts, roughly corresponding to interval before depression, years of depression and war, and postwar period. This period, Curran notes, was bookended by two very strong Jesuit presidents: Joseph Havens Richards (1888-98) and Edward Bunn (1952-64). Richards was a man of vision who labored hard to make Georgetown a modern university with requisite facilities, faculty, and resources. Besides his support for law and medical schools, he expanded undergraduate curriculum, began allowing elective courses, and established formal programs in graduate studies. Over next six decades, his successors opened of business administration, continuing education, dentistry, foreign service, languages and linguistics, and nursing. But it took Bunn to bring this highly complex enterprise up to a level of true excellence with ambitious building and fund-raising program, centralized administration, professionalized standards, institutional support for faculty, and a formal planning process. He succeeded in unifying Georgetown as an actual university rather than a collection of schools (2:391). The third volume covers Georgetown's rise to prominence as international university during quarter-century before bicentennial. There are two sections. Part 1 offers three chapters, including inevitable and lively chapter on institutional impact of 1960s.The second part's two chapters consider presidency of Timothy Healy (1976-89). This volume concludes with a brief but useful epilogue of a dozen pages that carries story forward into administration of first non-Jesuit president, John DeGioia (2001 to present). President Gerard Campbell (1964-68) refashioned Georgetown as a modern university by opening governance to faculty participation, according a full welcome to African Americans and women, sponsoring first comprehensive capital development campaign, and facilitating separate incorporation of Jesuit community. …