Editorial Reviews

Michael P. Foley, Ph. D., assistant professor of Patristics, Great Texts Program, Baylor University"Engaging and engrossing.... A mine of information on the debt we owe to Catholic life and thought."

Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand, professor emeritus, the City University of New York"Superb and scholarly.... Highly recommended."

Dr. Paul Legutko, Stanford University"Puts the Church back where it should be: at the center of values, science, laws, and institutions of Westerncivilization."

From the PublisherAsk a college student today what he knows about the Catholic Church and his answer might come downto one word: "corruption." But that one word should be "civilization." Western civilization has given us themiracles of modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of the rule of law, a uniquesense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, a philosophy grounded inreason, and innumerable other gifts that we take for granted as the wealthiest and most powerfulcivilization in history. But what is the ultimate source of these gifts? Bestselling author and professorThomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. Woods’s story goes farbeyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. InHow the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn: · Why modern science was born in theCatholic Church. How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred yearsbefore Adam Smith · How the Catholic Church invented the university · Why what you know about theGalileo affair is wrong · How Western law grew out of Church canon law · How the Church humanized theWest by insisting on the sacredness of all human life. No institution has done more to shape Westerncivilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church—and in ways that many of us have forgottenor never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recoveringthis lost truth.

About the AuthorProfessor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically IncorrectGuide to American History, as well as The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals and theProgressive Era and The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy. He holds fourIvy League degrees, including an A.B. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Columbia. He teaches courses inWestern civilization, is the associate editor of The Latin Mass magazine, and is a prolific essayist onhistorical subjects. He lives with his family in Coram, New York.