“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.