The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind - Tapa dura

Britain's most eminent publicly engaged philosopher (Scotland on Sunday)

If there is any such person in Britain as The Thinking man, it is A. C. Grayling (The Times)

Grayling is particularly good at illuminating the knottiness of moral discourse (Sunday Times)

There is an immense depth of human wisdom on display here, and five minutes with any passage will have you contemplating all day (Independent on The Good Book)

Very interesting . His account of the transition from magic to science is fascinating, and he demonstrates persuasively that the 17th century did indeed see a revolution in habits of thought and understanding of the physical world (Allan Massie Scotsman)

This sprint from the tenets of superstition to an increasingly revealed reality is a wonderful subject (Glasgow Herald)

Grayling is a natural educator . He provides concise and helpful summaries of pertinent events and ideas (Spectator)

His chapters on Bacon's freethinking, on Newton's scientific method and on Locke's political theory are models of their craft (Tablet)

A fascinating look at where we come from (Western Mail)

Anyone who can steer this particular reader through the labyrinth of diets and edicts and treaties that populate The Thirty Years' War deserves the highest praise. And Grayling is a model of clarity . As a survey of the period, The Age of Genius is fascinating [and] as an account of the development of ideas during one of the most exciting periods in Western history, The Age of Genius excels. Its scope is remarkable and it wears its learning lightly (Literary Review)