“Follow the Lord if you want to be perfect, and associate yourself with those among whom He speaks wisdom, He Who knows what to apportion to the day and what to the night, so that you will also know it and so that there will be lights for you too in the firmament of heaven. But this will not come to be if your heart will not be there, nor if your treasure will not be there, as you have heard from the good Teacher; what will be there instead is a barren and saddened earth, with thorns choking the word.”

These are not the final words of Augustine’s Confessions; they are, however, the final words of Peter Constantine’s new translation of Augustine’s Confessions, as it has been printed by Liveright. The last twenty-nine chapters of the thirteen-book classic are missing. Yes, missing. A barren and saddened earth, indeed! When I discovered that the text ended abruptly at XIII.24 instead of XIII.53, I began flipping frantically through the hardcover, looking for an explanation. There was none. I downloaded the Kindle version, wondering whether this was merely a misprint in my advance copy: the chapters were missing there, too. I called Liveright. A few hours later, I received a surprised (and appreciative) response: Constantine, who has translated to great acclaim authors ranging from Machiavelli to Tolstoy, had been ill during the editing process, and the work was mistakenly published without its final chapters. All