Volume 1

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

buy    more info

Cahill details the pivotal role the Irish played in preserving and transmitting the classical literature of both Greece and Rome when all the great continental libraries vanished, and scholarship ceased to exist. The newly literate Irish monks copied every piece of western literature they could get their hands on, preserving much of ancient culture and providing a bridge between the ancients and the medieval world.

Volume 2

Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels

buy    more info

Cahill reveals the momentous shift that made western civilization possible. Within the matrix of ancient religions and philosophies, life was seen as part of an endless cycle of birth and death; time was like a wheel, spinning ceaselessly. Yet somehow, the ancient Jews began to see time as linear, with a beginning and an end. From this insight came a new conception of men and women as individuals with unique destinies, a belief in progress and a hope that tomorrow can be better than today.

Volume 3

The Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus

buy    more info

Cahill begins with the Greco-Roman world of the three centuries before Jesus. In the context of this complex world, he explains why Jesus' message of peace and forgiveness was so startling. Although he discusses biblical scholarship of the origins of the Gospels and their various theological differences, the book is perhaps most fascinating in its portrayal of Jesus (the man with a sharp wit and infectious energy), enigmatic Mary, the brilliant Paul, and other figures of early Christianity.

Volume 4

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter

buy    more info

In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill explores the legacy, good and bad, of the ancient Greeks from the origins of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European tribes into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, to the formation of the city-states, to the birth of Western literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, art, and architecture