In this book, you are shown forty saints. The saints Sheed (The Author)chose for this collection are from various time periods: six before A.D. 500, seventeen from then to the Reformation, and seventeen from the Reformation to the middle of the twentieth century. Many are well known St. Anthony, Francis, Augustine, Patrick and Bernadette while others are lesser known for example, Columeille and Malachy.
The various authors that Sheed assembled to write these short biographies also include the well known and the lesser known. There are famous names like Hilaire Belloc, Alban Goodier and G.K. Chesterton, and there are priest and laymen whose names may be unfamiliar but whose writing still brings to life men and women whose closeness to God gave them purpose, strength, and especially, joy.