Charles Freeman makes a spirited case for why we should peer backwards in his sumptuous work.

Mr. Freeman’s contention is tendentious. The first problem is that he vastly overstates Augustine’s dependence on Plotinus and Plato.

Besides being hugely thought-provoking, this inquiry is a transparently personal work built around particular geographies, thinkers, and epiphanies that have animated Freeman’s rich intellectual life..

General readers may be overwhelmed by the breadth and depth, but specialists will delight in the considered, comprehensive details of Western European triumphs, discoveries, and setbacks. As ambitious as it is informative, this will have historians of all stripes rapt..

Writing in accessible yet long-winded prose, Freeman takes a broad approach to this 1,200-year period of massive cultural change.