"Features pugnacious prose, expository skillfulness, transgressive wisdom, and mental verve."

--The Weekly Standard

"A passionate, imaginative, richly detailed interpretation of the spiritual history of the modern West."

--BookForum

Australian sociologist John Carroll turns received wisdom on its head in this brilliant, provocative, and sweeping book. Humanism is commonly credited with building Western civilization as we know it--bringing about democracy, universal rights, and prosperity. But Carroll argues that "the great five-hundred year Humanist experiment to found an entirely secular culture on earth" has been an abject failure.