Review : Birth of reason

It is a pleasure to see Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £25, ISBN 0 297 81972 0) freshly available.
Immaculately researched and well written, this is the classic study of how the
English thought in the 16th and 17th centuries, immediately before modern
science began to emerge. An excellent and thorough background, this is still the
essential work for all students of the history of thought and science.