In Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century, Marc H. Ellis traces Maurin's life from his early years—as peasant, brother, and Catholic activist—through his meeting with Dorothy Day. Ellis' Chronicle focuses on the consequences of that meeting: the founding of the Catholic Worker movement and newspaper, the founding of hospitality, the farming communes. Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century is the first biography to really examine Maurin's thought. A commitment to non-violent reform and to a life of poverty were chief tenets of Maurin's philosophy; it was Maurin's notion that farmers and scholars would labor and learn together in the ideal world. Ellis discusses these and other ideas of Maurin, their development and their particular importance today.