James Turner is the Cavanaugh Professor of Humanities at the University of Notre Dame and the director of the Erasmus Institute. His books include Without God, Without Creed and Reckoning with the Beast also available from Johns Hopkins.

Turner's treatment of the nineteenth century is excellent and often brilliantly perceptive. -- Robert Nisbet The New York Times Book Review A crafted, intelligent book. The prose is remarkably clear, as is the argument. Turner offers us intellectual history in something like the grand manner. -- David D. Hall Reviews in American History