The Making of the Western Mind
Binding design by Noma Bar
Dominion is Tom Holland’s epic exploration of how everything we do has been shaped by Christianity, a subversive sect that grew to a religion. This beautiful Folio Society edition has a striking binding design by Noma Bar with 24 pages of colour images.
‘This book explores what it is that made Christianity so subversive and so disruptive …’
- Tom Holland
How could an obscure preacher in Judaea, condemned to suffer a slave’s death, create a moral vision that transformed the world? In an epic narrative spanning 2,000 years, Tom Holland traces the inexorable rise of Christianity. Dominion is not a conventional work of religious history, but the story of how a creed came to dominate the Western mind – beginning with the Romans, whose brutal social order it overthrew. On an exhilarating journey from antiquity to Christendom, it finds the imprint of the cross in surprising places: Dominion’s cast includes not just St Paul and Francis of Assisi but the Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche and Napoleon. As Holland reaches the age of Martin Luther King and the Beatles, he argues that the modern West is ‘a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions’ – a list in which he includes gender equality, human rights, scientific inquiry and even atheism. With 24 pages of superb illustrations and an elegant cover design by the award-winning illustrator Noma Bar, the Folio Society has created the consummate edition of an extraordinary, provocative book.
Binding design by Noma Bar
Three-quarter bound in blocked cloth, with a printed and blocked metallic cloth front board
Set in Cardo with Superior Title as display
592 pages
Frontispiece plus 24 pages of colour plates (54 images in total)
Plain slipcase
10˝ x 6¾˝
Printed in Slovakia
‘If great books encourage you to look at the world in an entirely new way, Dominion is a very great book indeed.’
- Dominic Sandbrook
One of Britain’s foremost authors on the ancient world, Tom Holland has written a string of acclaimed histories – three of which, Rubicon, Persian Fire and Dynasty, have previously appeared in Folio editions. To produce a cover for Dominion, The Folio Society turned to Noma Bar, a prolific, international award-winning artist. His design is a triumph of visual simplicity: a modern skyline and tower reflecting their ancient counterparts, with the whole forming a cross. Inside, the image selection is energetic and inspiring. Each era in the book’s historical sweep is represented in the six sections of full-colour illustrations, from Roman ceramics featuring Paul the Apostle and Renaissance oil portraits of Mary Magdalene to photographs portraying slavery in the USA, celebrations at the fall of the Berlin Wall and Nelson Mandela’s election victory and the burning of records by The Beatles.
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