100 Books Like A Secular Age

My favorite fantasy novels are those that take place in real and recognizable worlds because they allow me to imagine more clearly what it could be like if the marvelous, the magical, and the mythical were just as real as the kitchen sink and the laundry basket.

Susanna Clark’s iconic first novel, set against the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, is built upon a recognizable and very credibly created backdrop of social and economic unrest, bloody conflict, and international politics—at the heart of which is the quest of the eponymous Strange and Norrell to bring real magic back to the world. 

The two magicians are the only people able to make the magic work—and as they become more successful in their endeavors, they become the most famous men of their day—helping the Duke of Wellington to defeat Napoleon and setting the country on its heels with their… show more.

First published in 1947, this iconic book of the “Frankfurt School” could not be a study of AI and 21st-century technologies per see.

Instead it is a phantasmic explainer of how the mistakes of the past impinge on our humanity and the prospects for a better future. "What we had set out to do," Adorno and Horkheimer famously wrote in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

With spectacular erudition, the authors clearly show how the terror regime of the Nazis was rooted in the nefarious legacies of enlightenment Europe and its obsession with racial purity. As such, Adorno and Horkheimer presaged why it is that our polluted history feeds into racist AI technologies: Bad data, Adorno and Horkheimer would agree, produces bad outcomes. 

The late French philosopher Bruno Latour was infamous for his iconoclastic work in the history and sociology of science and technology.

If you read only one of his books, I’d say go for We Have Never Been Modern because it cuts to the heart of things by disrupting the conventional understanding of modernity as a clear separation between nature and culture. Latour argues that even as “moderns” have been rhetorically invested in this particular bifurcation of the world, nature-culture hybrids are continually proliferating.

So if you’ve ever asked yourself, why are cities not considered natural landscapes? Or why are animals always presumed to be without culture? Or what does it even mean to be modern? Then this is the book for you.

Chakrabarty’s monograph is a classic work of postcolonial theory.

Basically, it shows that despite their pretensions to universality, a lot of the humanities and social sciences have been founded on unexamined Eurocentric perspectives on world history. While modernity is often held up as a universal standard, Chakrabarty unmasks the widely held assumptions about “sovereignty,” “disenchanted space,” and “secular time,” as European constructs.

Famously, he also shows how the transition to capitalism was an act of translation that changed the way people saw the world and their relationship to each other. This book can be hard going, but it is very much crucial reading as it really undercuts some of the most widely held myths of modernity. 

This is the philosophical bedrock of the modern struggle for economic justice. It’s a cornerstone of my own book, actually.

“To sustain your existential identity,” writes Haaglund, “is to lead your life in light of what you value.”

Freedom is the ability to sustain that existential identity. It means having more time than that which you need to survive. The more time you have to live your life in light of what you value, the freer you are.

A society in which an entire class of people can spend their entire lifetimes working and remain poor is not a free society.

And yes, it’s a philosophy book, but it’s clear and accessible. 

Like Stone’s book, this is a book about history, not wokeness. It’s not an easy read, but it’s worth the effort.

It recounts the triumph of scientific reasoning and liberal tolerance over several decades in the mid-twentieth century. That triumph was largely brought about by the “secularization” of American culture, spearheaded by Jewish intellectuals.

I read it long before wokeness was a thing – it was published in 1996 – and found it interesting but not particularly relevant to anything I was thinking about. But when wokeness came along, it suddenly hit me that this new religion was taking us backwards, back to the beginning of Hollinger’s story.

If that trend continues, we are in danger of losing the gains that science and tolerance have produced.

Callum Brown is a card-carrying humanist and one of the greatest (and most combative) historians of modern secularism. This book’s concept is very simple: he’s conducted 85 in-depth interviews with self-identified atheists in Europe and the United States about how they got that way, how they understand their world and construct their values, and how they relate to the religions that some of them used to embrace. I think his celebration of these good people blinds him to the very particular historical processes at work here, but I challenge anyone to read this book and not acknowledge that our world has profoundly changed in the past half-century.

This book does a phenomenal job of building on a biblical foundation to help readers see the relevance of their work to God and their spiritual journey. I love how this book helps me develop strategies for positioning my work to build an eternal legacy.

Jordan Raynor also helped me to see how my view of work can offer important insights about heaven. I feel affirmed in my career and the significant value it can bring to the kingdom of God. 

Robert Benne interviewed me for his book, which offers case studies of several different kinds of religious universities. You know the interview is conducted well, when the person asking the questions is forcing you to think anew about your own implementation of vision. 

Benne asked me how we socialize faculty into our distinctive vision. I immediately sensed that we did not do enough and addressed the issue more fully both in practice and in one of my books.

At a Catholic university, one should also think about how other kinds of religious universities define and realize their mission. This book accomplishes that.

Eric was my PhD supervisor and was finishing the book as I began my thesis. This gave me a chance to have an insight into the thinking and the process behind the book’s creation as well as an opportunity to read the manuscript. Combining serious analysis of the data with an astute and observative reading of big global trends, this book sets out one of the most important trends underway today—the burgeoning numbers in strict, world-denying bearing a large number of children and able to hang onto them. A decade on, as secular birth rates plummet, the thesis is more valid than ever.