Dominion (50th Anniversary Edition)

Terrific: bold, ambitious and passionate Tom Holland is fun to read, monstrously erudite, wickedly joyful, and ahead of the established consensus, on average, by four years, three months, and two days This extraordinary book is vintage Tom Holland: history boldly and elegantly retold, with fascinating interconnections traced to create a narrative that cannot fail to stimulate, for it leads to a never-ending question Holland is an illuminating guide on a journey from Ancient Athens to 21st-century gay rights * History Revealed * Sustained with all the breadth, originality and erudition that we have come to associate with Holland's writing * Spectator * Fizzing with insights and challenges, this is one history book that is timely and important, as well as a feast of intellectual entertainment * Sunday Times * Holland is an exceptionally good storyteller with a marvellous eye for detail * The Economist * An all-absorbing story * Literary Review * This book has ruffled feathers . . . lyrical, vivid * Evening Standard * It's not often that you come across a book that completely transforms your understanding of the world * Spectator * A rich and compelling history of Christendom . . . A masterpiece of scholarship and storytelling, Dominion surpasses Holland's earlier books in its sweeping ambition and gripping presentation * New Statesman * [Holland encapsulates] so much, so intelligently and entertainingly, in a book that's fizzing with ideas * Mail on Sunday * I love the sweep of it * Sunday Telegraph * Tom Holland's stupendous new book . . . There isn't a page of this magnificent book that does not contain some fascinating detail and the narrative is held together with a novelist's eye for character and theme * History Today * A brilliant meditation on how Christianity in its Latin and Protestant forms entirely changed the way humans conceive life and their relationship to each other * New Statesman * An absorbing survey of Christianity's subversive origins and enduring influence is filled with vivid portraits, gruesome deaths and moral debates . . . Holland has all the talents of an accomplished novelist: a gift for narrative, a lively sense of drama and a fine ear for the rhythm of a sentence * Guardian * If great books encourage you to look at the world in an entirely new way, then Dominion is a very great book indeed . . . Written with terrific learning, enthusiasm and good humour, Holland's book is not just supremely provocative, but often very funny * Sunday Times * A bravura swing through centuries of Western European history . . . a cornucopia of characters and information: almost everyone would learn from it something they didn't know . . . the range and unobvious sweep of his narrative are most impressive * Times Literary Supplement * An erudite and fascinating look at the enduring legacy of Christianity, which, as numbers of believers are dwindling * The Lady * Those who like their history with a dose of lessons about the present will be impressed by Tom Holland's ambitious Dominion * Telegraph * Definitely my book of the year