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Title: Aptly titled in the wrong way...
Review: I was highly disappointed with the first edition - glaring omissions and inaccuracies abound. For example: Gerard Manley Hopkins is not even mentioned in the section concerning the British poets and in the chapter on religion, the authors make the boorish mistake of confusing the doctrine of the "Immaculate Conception" with that of the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. It might seem trivial to some, but if you want to write a book purporting to illuminate such topics, you better be up to the task, especially when your style is on the snide and cynical side. Maybe corrections were made in later editions, but I wouldn't count on it. Certainly a better read for this purpose is "A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future" by Charles Van Doren, which Amazon also stocks.
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