Enlightenment History

If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred and irrationality. Yet, as Steven Pinker shows, if you follow the trendlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer and more prosperous - not just in the West but worldwide. Such progress is no accident: it's the gift of a coherent value system that many of us embrace without even realising it. These are the values of the Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress.

The Enlightenment has been nothing if not divisive, being blamed for bloody disasters - Auschwitz, the gulags, Islamic terrorism - as well as being heralded as the harbinger of reason and equality. To this day historians disagree over when it was, where it was, and what it was. Kieron O’Hara deftly traverses these conflicts, presenting the history, ideology, culture, and social life of the Enlightenment, not as a simple set of easily enumerated ideas, but rather as an evolving conglomerate that spawned a diverse set of thinkers.

Fr. Vincent Miceli breaks ground in this analysis of seventeen Enlightenment theologians and philosophers who contributed to the rise of atheism. He explores their efforts and successes in convincing mankind to deny the existence of God, and he demonstrates how atheism has succeeded by creating mythical gods to stand in the place of God. What Fr. Miceli shows is that each tenet of atheism doesn't deny the existence of a Higher Power; it simply replaces the true Power with a false power.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberalelites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course.

The study of ancient Greek history has been central to the western conception of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which each generation has reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary world, through times of revolution, conflicting ideologies and warfare. It aims to offer a new history of Greek historiography from the Enlightenment to the present, and to acknowledge the continuing spiritual importance of the ancient Greeks for European culture.

The Enlightenment is one of the formative periods of Western history, yet more than 300 years after it began, it remains controversial. It is often seen as the fountainhead of modern values such as human rights, religious toleration, freedom of thought, scientific thought as an exemplary form of reasoning and rationality and evidence-based argument. Others accuse the Enlightenment of putting forward a scientific rationality which ignores the complexity and variety of human beings, propagates shallow atheism and aims to subjugate nature to so-called technical progress.

Can you imagine how the world would be different today if there had been no Enlightenment era? The Age of Enlightenment, which lasted throughout the 18th century, brought about fundamental changes in people’s thinking and transformed the entire fabric of society. Even ordinary people began to question their entrenched beliefs and dogmas. They wanted education, justice, freedom, and progress. They struggled to eliminate despotic rulers and desired to be governed by democratically elected representatives.

Richard of England was known as ‘Lionheart’. He was a King unbeaten in battle. His sword carved out a godlike legend from the battlefields of France to the blood-soaked sands of the Holy Land. He was England’s most romantic and heroic king, a passionate and sensitive man, great warrior, poet and musician, and a charismatic leader, blindly adored by the knights he commanded, deeply loved by more than one woman. But one woman captured his heart. She was a woman unchallenged in the lists of love. Blondelza, as daringly independent as she was beautiful. She lived by her wits and talent on...

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Penelope Drayton Spence has been hired by two of the world’s richest men to track down and interview enlightened people who may have arrived at the Fourth Awakening. The problem, as fast she can locate a potential candidate, they have a nasty habit of mysteriously vanishing. These “Chronicles” are written in the "Serial Novel" format Charles Dickens famously used for the “Pickwick Papers” and many of his later books. It is also the format magazines such as “The Saturday Evening Post” made popular not that long ago. THIS FOUR PART SERIES OF ...

We're all on a journey trying to move toward greater awareness, peace, joy, and love. Yet, daily life is full of endless distractions, upsets, and challenges. Best-selling author and frequent Oprah guest Jonathan Robinson set out to find the best ways he could find inner peace by studying with over 100 well-known spiritual teachers. In his multidecade quest, Robinson interviewed everyone from the late Mother Teresa to Ram Dass. By practicing over 50 spiritual methods and philosophies, he learned what really worked to deliver him to lasting inner peace.

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Penelope Drayton Spence has been hired by two of the world’s richest men to track down and interview enlightened people who may have arrived at the Fourth Awakening. The problem, as fast she can locate a potential candidate, they have a nasty habit of mysteriously vanishing. These “Chronicles” are written in the "Serial Novel" format Charles Dickens famously used for the “Pickwick Papers” and many of his later books. It is also the format magazines such as “The Saturday Evening Post” made popular not that long ago. THIS FOUR PART SERIES OF ...

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Finally understand the life-altering knowledge of the Hermetica! Imagine obtaining the wisdom of the ancient Egyptian philosophers. How different would your life be if you had access to their secret teachings on life, its origins, and its Creator? In what ways would your own life be transformed?

The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach’s Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach’s house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends.

Descubra los acontecimientos históricos más importantes de la historia europea moderna, como la Revolución Industrial y la Revolución francesa, la Primera y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el Holocausto, la Gran Depresión, el movimiento por el sufragio femenino, la Guerra Fría y mucho más. Desde las revoluciones hasta las guerras, la historia cobra vida con datos divertidos, imágenes y mapas fascinantes. Además, pondrá a prueba sus conocimientos con atractivas actividades. Tampoco debe preocuparse por las palabras más complicadas.

In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians - who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives - and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold - a grime-stained scrap of fabric - that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal.

In this engaging history, James MacGregor Burns brings to vivid life the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, during which audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, bringing down governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments that would ultimately reach every corner of the globe. Unlike most historians, Burns pays particular attention to America's intellectual revolution, beginning and ending his story on American soil.

La vida de un científico eminente durante la Revolución Científica y la subsiguiente Ilustración no era fácil. En nombre de la Iglesia católica, fueron asesinadas personas con ambiciones debido a sus trabajos científicos y filosóficos, que a menudo eran considerados como heréticos. Con el paso del tiempo, sin embargo, las verdades de la investigación y la exploración científica se han mostrado una y otra vez, y el punto de vista colectivo de la población comenzó a alejarse del dogma religioso para aproximarse hacia el método científico lógico.

Pissed and on the verge of ripping someone to shreds, I didn’t think before I ran off into the forest during a full moon. Not the smartest move.... I know. So of course, I was attacked by a thirsty vampire only to be saved by another.

The Devil Wins uncovers the complicated history of lying from the early days of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment, revealing the diversity of attitudes about lying by considering the question from the perspectives of five representative voices - the Devil, God, theologians, courtiers, and women.