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This is Samuel Putnam's tour of European literature which began to appear once the globe was circumnavigated and the printing press made books more available, which encouraged thinking and questioning beyond the confines of the Bible and provincial customs. It traces the modernization of education as we learned more about the universe -- astronomy, physics and science, philosophy -- and delved into understanding our own natures beyond religious constraints. It begins with Giordano Bruno, then bounces around among an array of philosophers - Bruno, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Spencer, Heeckel, etc., while making a sweep through Literature, the discovery of America, the French and American Revolutions, America's Civil War, playwrights like Shakespeare, agnostics like Ingersoll and Paine, the major and minor poets of Europe and America, geology, evolution, politics, nature, ethics, women's emancipation, and evaluates the influence of freethought in the Western world as of the 1890's. Putnam was a highly accomplished and prolific writer and poet, easy to follow yet often profound. (Summary by Michele Fry, BC)