The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments-Fast Shipping

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In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most distinguished intellectualhistorians gives us a brilliant revisionist history.
The Roads to Modernity reclaimsthe Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about human nature,politics, society, and religion–from historians who have downgraded its importanceand from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France overconcurrent movements in England and America.

Contrasting the Enlightenments in thethree nations, Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy and wisdom of the British, exemplifiedin such thinkers as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke, as well as the uniqueand enduring contributions of the American is their Enlightenments,she argues, that created a social ethic–humane, compassionate, and realistic–thatstill resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more than in Europe.

TheRoads to Modernity is a remarkable and illuminating contribution to the history ofideas.