An extensive history of the Age of Enlightenment, showing how, while it was an era of progress in many fields, it was also an age of cruelty and intolerance. During the 1600s, between the end of the Renaissance and the onset of the Enlightenment, Europe experienced a revolutionary period known as the Age of Enlightenment. This revolutionary period saw major advances in the fields of art, science, philosophy, political theory, and economics. However, all these were achieved in an environment of extreme political turmoil and irrational behavior on a pan-European scale, in the form of internal conflicts and international wars. Indeed, the Age of Enlightenment was born simultaneously with the Thirty Years' War, which would devastate Central Europe to an extent not seen again until the twentieth century. This period also witnessed the expansion of European empires around the globe and the beginning of a profitable new transatlantic trade, bringing transformative wealth to Western European society. However, there was a dark side to this brilliant wealth: it depended on mass slavery. By exploring the central events and the lives of some of the most influential characters of the era, such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Louis XIV, and Charles I, Paul Strathern narrates the story of this paradoxical era, while assessing the humanitarian cost of imposing progress and modernity upon which the Western world was built.