In Volume VI of his acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill guides us through a time so full of innovation that the Western world would not again experience its like until the twentieth century: the new humanism of the Renaissance and the radical religious alterations of the Reformation.
This was an age in which whole continents and peoples were discovered. It was an era of sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies—and of unprecedented courage, as thousands refused to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past. In these exquisitely written and lavishly illustrated pages, Cahill illuminates, as no one else can, the great gift-givers who shaped our history—those who left us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.
Philosophical Tennis Through the Ages
1353: How to Survive the Black Death
1381–1451: Lutherans Long Before Luther
1452: The Third Great Communications Revolution
1492: Columbus Discovers America
1518–1521: From Dispute to Divide
1516–1535: Utopia Now and Then
1522–1611: The Word of God Goes Forth—First in Hochdeutsch, Then in Shakespearean English
1520s: Encounters and Evasions in Paris
1525?–1569: The Ice Is Melting
1516–1525: From Zwingli to the Peasants’ War
1525–1564: From Princely Conversions to the Second Reformation
1545–1563: Catholics Get Their Act Together
1558–1603: The Religious Establishment of a Virgin Queen
1562–1648: Let’s Kill ’Em All!