By Anthony Esolen, The Catholic Thing - A few years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates, winner of a MacArthur genius award, and a popular writer on race in America, admitted he had never heard of Saint Augustine. Many people rushed to point out the irony, that an African American who makes much of Africa – he has named one of his sons for an African fighter against French colonialism – should be unaware of the greatest writer ever to come from the continent.