Enlightenment
What greed looks like
The roots of our desire for money, pleasure, and power reach back to the Enlightenment.
Steven Pinker’s absolute faith in reason
"This is not a book of Enlightenolatry," writes Pinker. But it is.
Culture and the Death of God, by Terry Eagleton
In Terry Eagleton's compelling narrative, three plotlines run concurrently: a parade of ideas from the Enlightenment to the present, a sustained argument about the role of culture, and a burlesque apologetic for Christianity.
reviewed by Samuel Wells
Cloud of skeptics
Peter Watson sketches in the lives and thoughts of an array of scientists, artists, and philosophers who offer ways to cope with the death of God.
The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, by George M. Marsden
In our gridlocked civic life, the secular ideals of the Enlightenment and the unbending stance of the religious right are both the blame, George Marsden argues.
reviewed by Kevin M. Schultz
Fire and Light, by James MacGregor Burns
James MacGregor Burns has authored an eminently readable history of that elusive historical movement we call the Enlightenment.
reviewed by George Dennis O’Brien