Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

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If great books encourage you to look at the world in an entirely new way, then Dominion is a very great book indeed . Even the increasing number in the West today who have abandoned the faith of their forebears, and dismiss all religion as pointless superstition, remain recognisably its heirs. He served two years as the Chair of the Society of Authors and is Chair of the British Library’s PLR Advisory Committee.

This drew on a principle as old as Christianity itself: that the rich had a duty to give to the poor.It is the incomplete revolutions which are remembered; the fate of those which triumph is to be taken for granted. Photograph: Philippe Sauvan-Magnet/Active Museum/Alamy View image in fullscreen A terrible death: 15th-century painting of the crucifixion by Sano di Pietro. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. According to Holland, over the course of writing about the " apex predators" of the ancient world, particularly the Romans, "I came to feel they were increasingly alien, increasingly frightening to me". In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to ‘the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome’.

lyrical, vivid * Evening Standard * It's not often that you come across a book that completely transforms your understanding of the world * Spectator * A rich and compelling history of Christendom . Alongside this were the inquisition which put to death many accused of heresy, seemingly at the whim of Church authorities. That is why Dominion will place the story of how we came to be what we are, and how we think the way that we do, in the broadest historical context.

Further down the line the British empire would similarly act as a vehicle for an analogus dissemination.

Tom Holland is fun to read, monstrously erudite, wickedly joyful, and ahead of the established consensus, on average, by four years, three months, and two days --Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the Incerto (The Black Swan, Antifragile.The adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine facilitated the dissemination throughout the Latin world and the vastness of the empire meant that this was inclusive of many peoples. Humanists will not, I think, be gratified to be reminded that “humanism derives ultimately from claims made in the Bible: that humans are made in God’s image; that his Son died equally for everyone; that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. He had resolved to forgive Quoting Matthew: “you have heard that it was said love your neighbour and hate your enemy, but I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” FW de Klerk resolved to set Mandela free. The geographic scope ranges from the Canaan of Abraham to Skellig Michael, where ascetic Irish monks did penance in the freezing Atlantic.

Christ was, of course, a Jew, and the God of Israel has a particular tenderness for the widow and orphan and a terrible wrath against the unjust rich, but what this makes clear is the revolutionary aspect of a worldview which extended to all peoples — slave and free.If you really have to be nailed to a cross, the best thing to do is lose a lot of blood beforehand, so by scourging Jesus the Romans unwittingly helped him on his way. Holland after twenty years of reading about classical antiquity recognised what a rupture Christianity created from the pagan culture.