The Golden Thread

Allen C. Guelzo is a New York Times best-selling author, having published several works on Civil War-era history, including Robert E. Lee: A Life, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.

With the end of the Renaissance in Europe, the Western world experienced a long series of cataclysmic events that still reverberate in modern society. The Golden Thread Volume Two: The Modern and Contemporary West begins with the end of the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church on European states during the Protestant Reformation, before turning to the creation of empires that swiftly circled the globe, and to the explosion of intellectual, economic, and technological advancements of the Enlightenment. These were often moments of flourishing in Western Civilization, but also moments of shadow, as they pointed toward the violent political upheavals that shook continental Europe and the Americas during the American, French and Bolivarean Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars. The political leaders of the Western nations struggled to minimize the impact of these developments. But the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic revolt against the Enlightenment (and Enlightenment politics), and a second wave of scientific movements in the 19th century challenged any attempt to restore the classical unity of the West. A radically re-drawn world emerged from these developments, and one which was ill-prepared for the colossal physical and moral shocks of the First and Second World Wars. In the closing chapters, we will see how Western civilization has, in our lifetimes, been simultaneously challenged by secular totalitarianisms and yet remarkably successful in laying the foundations for material prosperity around the globe. These contradictions will present to the student the most significant problems facing Western civilization today.