Frederic Ozanam, one of the great figures of nineteenth-century Catholicism, devoted his entire life to combatting the rampant anti-Catholic wave that engulfed France after the French Revolution. He abandoned a successfully law practice to become a lowly substitute instructor at the Sorbonne where he left he could best answer the Church's enemies. His tact and intellectual brilliance soon gained him an appointment to the influential chair of foreign literature. Apostle in a top hat reveals the compassion that made Frederic Ozanam beloved to the common man and the wisdom that made him an intellectual leader a revealing and inspiring portrait of a great Catholic leader whose inspirational guidance in the nineteen century is still a forceful influence in today's world.