A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

The story of one of the most important—and incendiary—books in Western history

When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published—"godless," "full of abominations," "a book forged in hell . . . by the devil himself." Religious and secular authorities saw it as a threat to faith, social and political harmony, and everyday morality, and its author was almost universally regarded as a religious subversive and politic...