Description: In a work as much about the present as the past, Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Reformation for the modern condition: a hyperpluralism of beliefs, intellectual disagreements that splinter into fractals of specialized discourse, the absence of a substantive common good, and the triumph of capitalism's driver, consumerism.
Brief description: Brad S. Gregory is Dorothy G. Griffin Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Notre Dame.
Review Quotes: A strikingly brave and wide-ranging work, in which a distinguished historian of early modern Europe interprets the contemporary world. The precision and clarity with which Gregory lays out his evidence and the accuracy with which he handles materials in many different languages and of many different kinds give this original book extraordinary credibility. It's rare for a book to attain this level of scholarship nowadays. An astonishing achievement.--Anthony Grafton, author of Worlds Made by Words