Continuing the epic of Christendom told in earlier volumes, 

The Age of Paradise

 and 

The Age of 

Division

, the author explains how, between the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth century 

and the Russian Revolution of the twentieth, secular humanism displaced Christianity to 

become the source of modern culture. The result was some of the most illustrious music, 

science, philosophy, and literature ever produced. But the cultural reorientation from paradise 

to utopia—from an experience of the kingdom of heaven to one bound exclusively by this 

world—all but eradicated the traditional culture of the West, leaving it at the beginning of the 

twentieth century without roots in anything transcendent.