Book Review: When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz

John Ganz, author of the Substack Unpopular Front, has published his first book which explores the political culture of the early 1990s. Primarily focused on the years 1990-1992, Ganz weaved an engaging narrative of how various historical, economic, and cultural forces put America on a political trajectory that helps make sense of the current moment. 

The end of the Cold War had a dramatic impact on domestic politics in America, bringing to bear forces that were suppressed and largely ignored since the 1940s. If Anti-communism was the glue that presented the semblance of bipartisanship of the mid-late 20th Century, the collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed new paranoias, and eventually a new type of politics. Ganz focuses on several figures who were harbingers of things to come. 

Ganz's writing skillfully combines biographical sketches, historical context, and intellectual underpinnings. Anxiety and anger over economic forces and demographic change were starting to shift attitudes of the white middle class. An early sign was the rise of David Duke, former Klansman and proud white supremacist, who gained the GOP nomination for Louisiana Governor. A lifelong misfit with antisocial tendencies, Duke emerged as a voice for struggling lower-middle class whites. Ganz deftly explains the corrupt political structures of Louisiana and connects Duke to the populism of 1930s figure Huey Long who also championed lower class whites and ran the state like an autocrat. Although Duke lost his bid for Governor, he predicted that if the economic fortunes of the white middle class continued to erode, his brand of politics would own the future. 

Duke's reactive brand of populist and identity politics trickled their way into the 1992 election. The sitting President George Bush was riding the crest of the First Gulf War victory with a 90% approval rating until the economy went into a gloomy recession. Bush found himself challenged from the Right by Patrick Buchannan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon who specialized in red meat rhetoric. By the 1990s, he had turned against the dogma of free trade and championed a new isolationism. Buchannan raged against "elites" who fleeced hard working Americans and took up the culture war mantle, seeing traditional American values under attack everywhere from public schools to rap music. 

Conservative politics were changing, starting to lean into a radicalism that had always existed, but was oozing into the mainstream. For many, William F. Buckley was the face of the Conservative Movement, founder of National Review and host of the TV Show Firing Line, where his witty repartee with fellow conservatives and the occasional liberal offered the image of genteel conservatism. Buckley also dismissed the John Birch Society, the Anti-communist organization fueled by conspiracy theories, from the Conservative Movement. But the ground underneath conservatism was shifting by the early 1990s, traditionalists, libertarians, defense hawks, and supply side economics were somewhat adrift in the post-Cold War world. Buchannan proudly called himself a paleoconservative, a radical rightist modeled on Franco and Mussolini.

Intellectual paleoconservatives loom large in the book. Samuel T. Francis and Murray Rothbard, one a white nationalist and the other an anarcho-capitalist, gave voice to the new currents. They despised the limited government mantra of the Reagan era. They hated democracy, Rothbard spoke of repealing the 20th Century and "breaking the clock" of democracy. Francis advocated for a strong state not unlike the Mafia, The Godfather was his ideal "right wing utopia." For Conservatives to win, they must champion culture above all else, a strange blend of confederacy worship and Anglo-Saxon fetishization. Francis identified the growth of militias and militancy in 1980s America as the first stirrings of a new culture war, a sign of people starting to wake up in the heartland.

Ganz explains how the farming crisis of the 1980s radicalized many whites in the Great Plains. A chapter on Ruby Ridge, the botched Federal raid on armed militants in Idaho that led to the loss of innocent life, becoming a cause celebre for antigovernmental forces spreading like wildfire. Economic displacement fueled the new militancy, often fueled by crackpot theories, xenophobia, and antisemitism. The 1992 candidacy of Texas mogul Ross Perot (another major character in the book), which captured the imagination of many by promising he could fix everything with smarts and hard work was a foreshadowing of Trump.

The central question of the book, in the words of Ganz:

We are still working to answer why the loss of faith in the old order has registered an intensified anti-egalitarianism rather than a renewed egalitarianism, why perceptions of public corruption and criminality have led to the open embrace of corruption and criminality rather than its rejection, and why discontent with the distribution of wealth and power has fostered closer popular identification with certain types of capitalism and capitalists (22).

Part of the answer lies in the lack of imagination of liberal politicians. Ganz never quite argues the notion but suggests it. It's in his critique of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Governor of Arkansas, Clinton hammered Bush's economic policies while his folksy persona exuded charm and intelligence. But he was also temperamental and sensitive to criticism from the left of his own party, especially from the more progressive Jesse Jackson wing. Clinton liked the perks of being a statesman, he enjoyed rubbing shoulders with power brokers and celebrities a bit too much. His two terms as President saw him make many compromises with the Right on economic policy.

Ganz points out how the populists' movements on the Left such as Jesse Jackson's attempt to build a multi-racial working-class movement and Bernie Sanders championing social democracy never got their proper chance. The malaise of the Democratic Party, Robert Altman's TV series Tanner '88 is an excellent example, is another part of this story.

In a way, Trump is the main character in the book even though he only makes a few appearances in the chapter on 1990s New York City politics and the popularity of the gangster John Gotti. Trump's psychic connection with middle America did not happen overnight, he's like a Frankenstein the radical right envisioned promising to fix everything, stopping illegal immigration, casually endorsing conspiracy theories, talking like a mobster, famous for being famous, and promising retribution to all internal enemies. 

With the 2024 Presidential election looming, the Right has their radical plans in place for Day 1. The world of a year from now would look ominously different. When the Clock Broke illustrates how the fringe becomes the norm due to economic and cultural forces. But even if the immediate existential crisis of democracy is averted this time around, the problem of wealth distribution will remain, and it will rest on the shoulders of those who believe in democracy to prove they are up to the challenge. 

TV Review: Rubicon: S1E1: "Gone in the Teeth"

Directed Allen Coulter

Written by Jason Horwitch

Air Date: June 13, 2010

Starring: James Badge Dale (Will Travers); Jessica Collins (Maggie Young); Lauren Hodges (Tanya MacGaffin); Dallas Roberts (Miles Fieldler); Christopher Evan Welch (Grant Test); Arliss Howard (Kale Ingram); Miranda Richardson (Katherine); Roger Robinson (Ed Bancroft)

Rubicon was a serialized conspiracy thriller that aired for 13 episodes on AMC during the fall of 2010. Inspired both by the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s* and the post-9/11 climate of the 2000s, the series was a curious blend of Hitchcockian suspense and workplace drama.

The series follows the goings on at the American Policy Institute in New York City, a private intelligence gathering agency that works closely with larger apparatus of the National Security State. Unlike traditional espionage shows, which follow charismatic spies in exotic locales, Rubicon is solely focused on analysts whose job is to make sense of large amounts of data and intelligence.

The protagonist is Will Travers, a brilliant analyst who lost his wife and daughter at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Obsessed with crossword puzzles, he uncovers a strange message in a collection of clues from several major newspapers and takes it to his mentor and former father-in-law David, who dismisses the message as a joke among puzzle writers.

At their daily meeting the teams discuss parts of the world they are tracking - phone scammers in Pakistan, a Russian weapons salesman, and missile silos being constructed in Iran. The next day David is killed in a train accident, and a shaken Will suspects it was more than random. He does some investigating and finds evidence pointing to foul play and notices he's being followed.

Will's offered David's job by Kale Ingram, mysterious figure with a long past working intelligence for the Government, David reluctantly accepts the new position, despite his introverted nature. Later Will meets with retired (and haunted) codebreaker Ed Bancroft, who also suspects David was the victim of a conspiracy. After accepting the new position, Will is told to go "upstairs" and meet with his new superiors. 

There's a nerdy appeal to Rubicon, in that the characters must use their minds to assess national security threats, not unlike the bookish analysts depicted in Three Days of the Condor. Will's personal connection to 9/11 brings a pathos to his character. Rubicon also excels at blending the mundane with paranoia, like any secret organization there are levels of access of knowledge with various parties with differing interests. 

Conspiracies are always afoot, and as the NY Times retrospective review pointed out, Rubicon suggested the future political climate. Conspiracy theories are no longer fun parlor games for pop culture enthusiasts, but they've proliferated everywhere and taken a dark turn, shaping an array of multiple realities, and altering political positions. Nothing is what it seems on Rubicon - and reality itself these days.

(The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and All the Presidents Men are cited as major influences)

Thoughts on the 4-8-24 Total Eclipse

I knew the eclipse would be passing my way, but I didn't give much thought other than it would be something interesting to witness. After all, I had seen a partial eclipse in 2017 and many lunar eclipses, but never one in totality. 

I live in Dayton, Ohio, but I drove two hours north to Holgate to witness the event with my parents. We switched between watching local and national news coverage of the eclipse as the path traversed across a swath of North America. Anticipation was growing that this stretch of rural Ohio would be part of a rare astronomical phenomenon.

When the afternoon arrived, there was bright sun with minimal cloud cover. The time of totality would be 3:10:49pm, as the time drew closer it began to gradually get darker. About 10-15 minutes before, it was darkening inside the house as if a storm was on the way. I kept checking with my eclipse glasses until totality arrived. 

Although I knew what was coming from a practical sense, I still wasn't quite prepared for the sensory overload of when it happened. It got dark - fast! Birds were flying lower. Insects were buzzing. Shouts and cheers could be heard around the small town. And the transformed sun in the sky, a black and simmering silver sphere, it was both wondrous and unnerving. It felt new and old at the same time.

One's eyes aren't exactly sure what to do. Gaze at the eclipsed sun (Venus also appeared) or take in the sudden darkness, your cognition is thrown out of balance. Time slows down as if in a waking dream. The mysterious and overwhelming power of the universe has revealed itself.

Part of what makes an eclipse special is that it's such a fleeting experience, a brief glimpse into eternity, a tenuous link with the past and future. I find myself playing the moment over and over, trying to replay it like a movie reel. But unless one has unlimited funds to seek eclipses out; for most it's a one-time occurrence.

For the rest of the day my parents and I reflected on what we witnessed. We all agreed it was far more profound than we expected. The sudden swift to normality was a bit jarring! My Mom cooked a chicken dinner and were glad we saw it together.

One is reminded life moves in the blink of an eye - and it can often be confusing and contradictory. We question our decisions and lament the futility of trying to find the time to do things. Yet for a few minutes the universe reminds us we exist, and it exists - and in that space we see the wonder. 

Book Review: The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story by Sam Wasson

While Francis Ford Coppola is mostly known today for directing The Godfather films, Sam Wasson's latest book The Path to Paradise offers a fresh perspective on Coppola's importance to modern cinema. The book also will serve as an excellent contribution to books on the New Hollywood era. Its intense focus on Coppola also separates it from the rest, letting the reader get immersed in Coppola's bouts of megalomania and inspired moments of inspiration.

Path to Paradise is not a conventional biography, but appropriately took a cinematic approach, centering the narrative with Coppola and his family in the Philippines during the production of Apocalypse Now, while inserting flashback chapters. The prologue and final chapter provide a glimpse into Coppola's latest project Megalopolis, his decades long in the making vision of a modern Utopia. At the book's core is Coppola's film company American Zoetrope, which he started in 1969 with George Lucas.

Lucas is another major figure in the story. A star film student at USC, Lucas was an intern on Coppola's 1968 studio musical Finian's Rainbow. Both connected and shared a distaste for the studio system, leading Coppola to make The Rain People, a film mostly improvised and shot on the road. Invigorated by the experience, Coppola envisioned his own studio as an alternative to Hollywood, one that would use cutting edge technology and place art above commerce. Based in San Francisco, American Zoetrope quickly got a distribution deal with Warner Bros, and Lucas's THX-1138 was the first project.

Wasson provides a colorful account of the early years of Zoetrope, but the money quickly ran out, forcing Coppola to start directing films for the studios to save his company, which led him to The Godfather. Coppola disliked the Mario Puzo novel as a trashy potboiler, but felt there was narrative skeleton there for a great film. Lucas would eventually form his own companies, Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic, and the success of Star Wars allowed him to achieve independence from Hollywood. Lucas's conservative approach to business separated him from Coppola, designing films to placate audience tastes, creating a rift in their complex friendship.

After making three masterpieces in a row, the two Godfather films and The Conversation, Coppola decided to adapt Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for the Vietnam War. Apocalypse Now was initially Lucas's project that he developed with screenwriter John Milius, conceived as a low budget war film to be shot on location in Vietnam. With Lucas tied up with the Star Wars films, Coppola imagined an epic statement more about the nature of man with the Vietnam War serving as backdrop.

Coppola planned for a four month shoot over the summer of 1976, but it turned into a project that consumed and obsessed him. While his wife Eleanor's film Heart of Darkness remains an iconic portrait, the book provides more of a psychological rollercoaster. At one point, Coppola decided he must become Colonel Kurtz to complete the film, nearly destroying himself and his marriage in the process. Once again, the book does a fantastic job of putting the reader into Coppola's headspace.

As a coda, Wasson ends the book with an account of One from the Heart, Coppola's follow up to Apocalypse Now that was a colossal flop. An expensive musical filmed on soundstages designed as an artificial Las Vegas, the project bankrupted American Zoetrope, and forced Coppola to work again as a director for hire through the 1980s and into the 1990s. 

The Path to Paradise tells an intimate story about art, technology, and personality during the 20th Century.  Coppola's vast imagination and personality seem to serve as elixir against the 2020s fervor over artificial intelligence. It will be curious to see Megalopolis once it's released to the world, but it will be a statement, and some will be paying attention.

Wasson, Sam. The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story. New York: Faber & Faber, 2023. Print.

Book review: Spielberg: The First Ten Years by Laurent Bouzereau

Spielberg: The First Ten Years by Laurent Bouzerau provides an inside view of Steven Spielberg's first decade as a filmmaker, years when he revolutionized the possibilities of commercial cinema. A coffee table size volume, the book is loaded with rare photographs and inserts including marketing material and production notes. Each chapter includes an interview with Spielberg. The author Bouzerau had a long association with Spielberg, the director of many making of documentaries, notably for Jaws, Close Encounters, and 1941. 

The portrait of Spielberg at the start of his career is that of a focused and meticulous young man, at ease with working within the studio system when many of his peers were not. His status as a Wunderkind was an image he self-consciously fashioned as a teenager when he made full length amateur films that were covered by the local press. His 1968 short film Amblin earned him a contract with Universal to direct episodic television, which he skillfully used as a training ground to direct features. 

Duel was Spielberg's breakthrough, a made for TV film that aired in 1971, based on a Richard Matheson short story about a man being menaced by a truck driver. The highway thriller proved to be the ideal project for Spielberg to show off his skills. Working on a tight schedule that required complicated action sequences, the film in its original form was a 70-minute tour de force of action for the small screen. The book includes a foldout of the detailed story boards Spielberg used as a guide during the shoot.  Duel earned high ratings and Spielberg was allowed to shoot extra scenes for a theatrical release in Europe to critical acclaim. 

Spielberg's first feature, The Sugarland Express, remains an outlier in his filmography. Loosely based on a true story, the film is set in Texas and follows two fugitives who kidnap a highway patrolman in a quixotic quest to prevent their son from going into foster care. A more complex road movie than Duel and in keeping with the popularity of "lovers on the run" movies of the era, Sugarland allowed Spielberg to further develop his technical skills on a wider canvas, while crafting a kinetic narrative both character and action driven. Some found the tonal shifts disjointed, from the light comedy of the early scenes to the satiric and ultimately tragic climax. A modest success that garnered high praise from influential critics like Pauline Kael, it earned him the right make a pure potboiler - Jaws. 

So much has been written about and discussed about Jaws, yet new insights are always being made about it. Spielberg has never written a memoir nor recorded any commentary tracks for his films, so his interviews are the closest insight we get into his creative process. In retrospect, there's simply no film quite like Jaws and I suspect interest in it will never dissipate. Spielberg managed to balance character and spectacle to perfection. All the right elements came together from the casting, the script, and the John Williams score, but Spielberg's determination to see it through and balance all the elements of comedy, horror, suspense, political allegory, and family drama that continues to amaze audiences.

His follow up to Jaws, Close Encounter of the Third Kind may not have aged as well as Jaws with it's late '70s New Age/Post-Watergate vibe that may be lost on younger viewers. The success of Jaws allowed Spielberg to pursue his passion project on UFOs, loosely based on his full length feature he made as a teenager entitled Firelight. Even more so than Jaws, CE3K became the definitive Spielberg experience with its themes of suburban angst, wondrous visions, and enduring sense of hope. Technically, it proved another breakthrough for Spielberg, which in addition to Star Wars released in the same year, changed cinema forever.

Richard Dreyfuss served as Spielberg's avatar in Close Encounters, playing the child-like protagonist Roy Neary, while the rest of the cast perfectly inhabited their roles: Francois Truffaut as the compassionate scientist, Bob Balaban as the translator, Teri Garr in the thankless role of Roy's put upon wife, Melinda Dillon as the prototypical Spielberg mom, and Cary Guffey as the young boy Barry. In its weaving between domestic drama and special effect light show culminating in a meeting of cosmic importance, audiences once again proved receptive. 

I found the most interesting chapter to be on Spielberg's first flop 1941. Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale who would go on to write the Back to the Future movies, 1941 was conceived as an absurdist dark comedy about paranoia on the West Coast following the attack on Pearl Harbor. With a big budget and a large cast, Spielberg admits he let the project go off the rails. Loud and irreverent, it exemplifies the excess of late '70s Hollywood. But it's aged well, with an eclectic cast including John Belushi, Toshiro Mifune, and Christopher Lee, the incredible set pieces are a testament to the analog era of moviemaking. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark marked Spielberg's first collaboration with George Lucas. Made as a course correction after his first flop, Spielberg made the film under budget and ahead of schedule. As a period flavored action film with supernatural elements, Raiders became an instant blockbuster, and Spielberg recalls it as one of his favorite experiences as a director. 

Bouzerau concludes the book with E.T. The Extraterrestrial, a film which marked a turning point in Spielberg's career, is a culmination of sorts. A more intimate version of Close Encounters, with a visitor from space arriving who heals a broken family. All the Spielberg themes of family struggles, returning home, and coming of age are expressed in the most universal way possible. A life changing experience in terms of his career and personal life. 

Spielberg: The First Ten Years adds depth and insight to the early years of Spielberg, an in-depth look at creativity and inventiveness. 

Book Review: The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us by Adam Kirsch

 

Adam Kirsch's brief, but highly informative work of synthesis tracks two intellectual currents from the fringes that are beginning to bubble up into mainstream culture. Both involve the future, one with no people. There's the Anthropocene world view which argues human activity from its very beginning began to change the ecosystem of the earth for its own ends. All the climate catastrophes we face are a direct result of human activity - and they welcome the extinction of humanity as the best thing for mother earth. Meanwhile, the transhumanists believe technological advancement will not only extend human life but will lead to the next step in evolution that will leave humans obsolete.

A growing number of scientists, poets, activists, and philosophers believe humanity has already doomed itself to extinction and there's no going back. The only question is whether the extinction will be fast or slow. Will it be a Children of Men situation, when the last remnants of humanity devolve into violence and rage? Ultimately, a planet without humans will see a restoration of nature in perfect harmony. A 2019 novel The Overstory by Richard Powers posits that trees are superior to people for many reasons; trees are peaceful and flourish for thousands of years. While humanists privilege consciousness and intelligence, most of the Anthropocene worldview consider non-human life and inanimate objects like rocks to be far superior. 

Many are also avid Anti-Natalists, with varying degrees of radicalism. South African philosopher David Benetar in Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence argues the act of procreation only brings more suffering into the world, he envies those who never existed. Others favor strict birth control laws and widespread abortion, anything that will reduce birthrates. These ideas have filtered into the mainstream. Polls find that prospective Millennial and Gen Z parents are conflicted about bringing children into a world that might be a living hell for their children to endure. Birthrates have fallen in the Western world, while China and Russia are offering incentives for people to marry and have children.

It goes without saying, the anti-humanist ideas are pessimistic, and one wonders if its acolytes are mere depressives or hardcore realists. Transhumanists see the future somewhat differently; they hope to live long enough to a time (two decades is the default prediction) when technology can extend lifespans and cure all diseases. Silicon Valley tycoons are pouring billions into such research. Space travel and colonizing Mars are also part of the plan. There's a strange optimism running through the movement, certain that any human born in 2023 will live a thousand years. In time, a synthesis of artificial intelligence and biology will provide the next step in evolution, imagine the ending of Steven Spielberg's 2001 film A.I:

For transhumanists, the replacement of humanity by a better, more intelligent, more capable successor species is a similarly worthy sacrifice, even if it ends up creating a world in which human beings can no longer find their own reflection. (65)

Kirsch foresees an eventual political alliance between the anti-humanists and transhumanists. They will find common ground on the idea of sacrificing humanity for a better future, one with a reduced number of homo sapiens. They will support policies that reward citizens who have no children and focus resources on reducing carbon emissions. From a geopolitical perspective, countries with high birthrates and dependent on fossil fuels will be considered hostile and may face penalties like draconian economic sanctions. 

Kirsch refers to the masses as traditionalists, those who look upon these cultural shifts with disdain and fear. In my days of listening to conspiracy radio, one of the most mentioned ones had to do with reducing the human population by 99%. A belief that secret societies have their own genocidal plan in place to rid themselves of the masses. That's crazy, but it may stem from a sense that many in the educated classes look down on them. Today's politics of resentment are partly fueled by a perceived condescension from technocrats and government bureaucrats. Modern populism carries an animus against educated classes telling them what's best:

The Covid-19 pandemic revealed that millions of people are suspicious of government funded vaccines. How would they react to a government that limited family size or promoted prenatal interventions using GNR technologies? (97)

Those who hold to traditional religious beliefs and cultural values are also turning to "strong men" to spearhead their interests, which will lead to more conflicts, a prediction Kirsch believes Nietzsche predicted in his 1888 work Ecco Homo, "the concept of politics then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare." Clashes over historical monuments and gender identity are symptoms of these abstract conflicts of the future.

Left in the dust will be the humanists:

[Their] secular reverence for humanity nurtured two of the greatest inventions of the modern world: liberal democracy, that idea that every human being deserves to participate in self-government, and is capable of doing so, and humanistic culture, in which the purpose of the arts is to explore what it means to be human. Today both of these enterprises are in obvious crisis. (98)

The Revolt Against Humanity shines light and some much-needed context on the undercurrents of today's anxieties about the future. Kirsch points out that projections of what's to come rarely get it right. Despite all the hyperbolic projections of futurists, either messengers of doom or Panglossian prophecies of immortality and virtual reality bliss outs, our day-to-day experiences have their own rhythms and peculiarities. I don't wish for the end of humanity, but I do feel skeptical about its prospects. Extreme positions of either joyfully willing extinction or a hope in magical technologies that will solve everything, I would suggest, will inevitably be moderated, thereby changing the calculus and just maybe walk us away from the cliff of a bad Black Mirror episode.

Book Review: The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism by Peter Gay

The first of Peter Gay's two-volume history of the Enlightenment published in 1966, The Rise of Modern Paganism delves into the influences and tensions that influenced the philosophes of Europe during the 18th Century. Gay was a professor of History at Columbia and Yale and the prolific author of a wide variety of books ranging from intellectual, social, to cultural history. 

The prose of this work is first rate, written with grace and precision, earning the National Book Award. Dense. but never overwhelmingly so, Gay skillfully synthesizes and bridges philosophic ideals across the centuries. The primary thesis posits the 18th century philosophes determination to make a clean break with Christianity and restore "pagan" philosophies of the ancients including tolerance, idealistic, a recovery of nerve against the overwhelming power of the Church. 

Gay skillfully juggles varying figures and ideas. When thinking of the Enlightenment, the typical names are Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, and Diderot - but there are so many figures who made contributions. Neither were they uniform in their programs and ideas, there was a wide spectrum of thought. Applying criticism to everything was one tool all had in common. Few of them came up with original ideas or invented their own philosophic systems, they were primarily interpreters who believed in the power of reason to refine and reshape society for the better. 

Much of the book deals with the historical influences that shaped the philosophes. To them, it was in the words of Cicero or Lucretius (just to mention a few) where true wisdom was to be found. Edward Gibbon's epic history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is fountain of Enlightenment ideals about the past, his history juxtaposed the rise of Christianity with the Empire's fall.

This volume also traces the course of thought through the rise of Christianity and the Middle Ages. Philosophes popularized the skewed view of "Dark Ages" as a time of regression and ignorance, they scoffed at attempts of synthesize Christianity with ancient philosophy. The Renaissance of the 15-16th centuries was still ensnared with religion but provided a new intellectual climate to set the stage for a return to secular ideas by the efforts of Erasmus and others to translate ancient texts from their original forms. 

The erudition, quotation, and insight packed into this book are impressive. Gay is the kind of writer who makes the reader feel smarter. My copy is full of notations I wrote. The ideas, conflicts, and individuals in the book still speak to the 21st Century. Gay makes an argument for their relevance in the modern era as harbingers of free thought, although their legacy remains a point of contention among philosophers and historians. Th Rise of Modern Paganism mostly concerned with their intellectual inheritance, while the next volume The Science of Freedom deals more directly with them as contemporary figures living in the 18th Century.