Dominion

How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

By: Tom Holland

Narrated by: Tom Holland, Mark Meadows

Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

A "marvelous" (Economist) account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination.

Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion - an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus - was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. 

Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.

©2019 Tom Holland (P)2019 Basic Books

Critic reviews

"A sweeping narrative...[Holland] is an exceptionally good storyteller with a marvelous eye for detail...excellent fun." (The Economist)

"What in other hands could have been a dry pedantic account of Christianity's birth and evolution becomes in Holland's an all-absorbing story...It takes a master storyteller to translate the development of a philosophical notion into a captivating story, and Holland proves to be one... Holland offers a remarkably nuanced and balanced account of two millennia of Christian history - intellectual, cultural, artistic, social and political. The book's scope is breathtaking." (The Literary Review)

"Christianity may not be on the march, but its principles continue to dominate in much of the world; this thoughtful, astute account describes how and why... Holland delivers penetrating, often jolting discussions on great controversies of Western civilization in which war, politics, and culture have formed a background to changes in values... An insightful argument that Christian ethics, even when ignored, are the norm worldwide." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

Only the forward is narrated by Holland.

12 hours in, I just can't take any more of the narrator's strange emoting. Every sentence is read with a melodramatic treatment that would be strange for any book - but for this text it seems particularly strange. It is as if Meadows has no confidence in Holland's writing and feels that he needs to pump some drama in what he (or the producer) feels is dull stuff. Also, I don't think it is fair of Audible to use Holland's brief narration of the Preface as the "sample" for the book when it is Meadows who takes over for another 22 plus hours!. Honestly, it was as if the narrator were reading aloud sentences in a language he only understood phonetically and had not the vaguest idea as to the meaning. It was so laughably bad - as members of my household can attest when I listened without earbuds - so disassociated with content that as engrossed as I was by the material, I pulled the plug at 12 hours in and am reading the rest of the book (at page 292) on my own.

btw - I have noticed a disturbing trend that "performance" by the narrator has begun to overwhelm the text in other Audible selections as well. These strange highly interpretive (and strange), hyper-dramatic narrative treatments have too often spoiled the nuanced writing of excellent authors. The voice of the writer is destroyed by narrators who I suppose have been told to "be engaging." It's awful! If this is an intentional effort by audiobook producers to be "entertaining" it reveals a lack of trust of both writer and reader.

Author only reads preface

Author only reads preface. Other guy reads the rest. Beware. It’s good. You just won’t get that sweet accent for twenty-two hours!

A Little Confusing

This book was a little confusing, or at least my expectations were confused. I thought it was going to be a study of how Christian culture and thought took over the world (which it certainly did), instead it read to me like a travelogue of Christian history. I found myself repeatedly asking the question, “what is the author’s purpose in all this?” Rightly or wrongly it was befuddling to me.

That is not to say that the book isn’t interesting, because it is.

I think my favorite parts of the book were two-fold, first the prologue and epilogue because Mr. Holland writes personally in those sections and I found them the most interesting parts for me, especially in the epilogue concerning the influence of his great-aunt who was a committed Christian.

The other part of the book that I enjoyed was when Mr. Holland writes of current events. He rightly points out the origin in a Christian milieu of virtually all of the forces that are either outright opposed to the Christian faith, or certainly at odds with it. As one example the “woke” movement in which, not only must you ask forgiveness for your sins, but also do penance and atone for them. Where did this pattern come from? The Christian faith of course. Mr. Holland gives plenty of examples, and, like it or not, he is correct in his analysis

lots of nice writing, but kind of light on history

just like the other Tom Holland books I have read , I felt it was nice, sweet and fluffy, but kind of lacking in substance.

btw , I do think (along with many others) that "Rubicon" was his masterpiece. this is kind of the closest he has come to that I think, but still a bit too fluffy in content.

Affectation ruins the text

I tried really hard to enjoy this as the topic is fascinating and relevant. I usually prefer listening to non-fiction because the narration brings the text more energy. However, in this case it is distracting at best and ruinous at times. I finally gave up, as I dreaded getting in the car and having to hit the play button. I will buy the book and read it instead. Hoping Tom Holland’s future books are given a more appropriate narrator.

Christendom as societal foundation

As the subtitle states, the aim of this book is to show how Christianity is the foundation upon which modern secular societies have been built and upon which the morality of those societies is based. In this, I believe the book succeeds admirably though not without a few hiccups.

Starting several centuries before the birth of Christ, Tom Holland describes what morality - such as it was - actually meant in pre-Christian cultures. With this starting point, the author takes us through twenty-one chapters, leading up to the present day, each one further along in time, showing how Christianity itself evolved as well as the Christians' understanding of what it meant to be Christian. Through this, the author shows that modern society's moral principles are so fully ingrained in Western civilization that we take them as a given (the concept of human rights and equality being primary among these) without recognizing how alien these concepts are - or were before Christianity. Even today's secular humanists rely upon them, many if not most of whom are not aware of the wellspring of their now-cherished beliefs.

I thought it was an excellent book and I learned a lot about history and the evolution of moral thought in this book. One complaint would be that there isn't, at the end, any resolution to the question of, If society no longer recognizes that it owes its cherished moral beliefs to Christianity, what will happen to those beliefs when/if Christianity recedes from daily life. To some extent this question is dealt with, perhaps a bit more completely, by Douglas Murray near the end of his book, "The Strange Death of Europe." Holland leaves this as more of an open question, only briefly asking the question itself near the end of the book.

But other than that quibble, I found this be an enlightening book that any student of history would enjoy. The narration is superb - both Tom Holland's introduction and conclusion and Mark Meadows' reading of the majority of the book.

I Was Furious

I was furious when, eighteen hours into this 22 hour tome, the author finally revealed his willingness to egregiously mis-characterize facts to support his theory of history. The whole volume is supposed to be about how Christianity has shaped civilization. I spent eighteen hours listening to him set-up straw men and then "slay" them with unsupported assertions. It was intellectually mushy but there was enough interesting perspective to keep me going. Then, while discussing Christian influence in the Gilted Age, he savaged the life and reputation of Andrew Carnage. The author's characterization was so one-sided and vituperative that it caused me to question all his previous assertions about historical personages and situations. I stopped reading. I just wish it had happened earlier and saved me the wasted time.

Not Worth The Time Unless You Love Arrogance

This book was recommended to me by several people whose opinions I value and trust. I gave it a good go - the preface and 2 chapters - and returned it in disgust (the very first book I returned in 3 years as an Audible member). First, the book itself. As other reviewers said, it is a sweeping summary of history. My objection is that the author is so full of himself that he is insufferable. "What a smart and good boy I am" comes through on every page. If I heard yet another sentence start with a clause, or a statement about Pompey or Demetrius with a cutesy aside, something on the order of "He never met an audience he didn't want to impress," I thought I'd scream. The book reads like a student who wants to cram every little bit of information he's acquired into the pages to impress us with his knowledge. Yuck.

The narrator was perfect for this book with his Oxbridge accent that made me want to rip the application out of my phone. While I would have loved listening to him on a different book, he exacerbated the pretentiousness of the text. Highly dramatic, one could say he was appropriately conveying the sense of the book - so I may look for other narrations by Meadows, but NEVER will try another book by Tom Holland. Be forewarned. I'm going to go wash off the memory of a really, really unsatisfactory experience.

Engaging, Insightful, Relevant, and Powerful

This is the best book I’ve read in a while. By giving a survey of from pre-Christian Rome to the modern day, Holland demonstrates that “universal equality”, “secularism”, and “glory of the downtrodden” are distinctly Christian innovations whose seditious and disruptive effects so profoundly shaped Western thought as we know it. So deeply have we internalized these values that they have become “self evident” even though throughout history, and even in some cultures today, they were and are far from self evident. As he builds up his framework throughout the narratives of history, the book crescendos into applying that framework to the recent social changes of the late 2010s and gives a truly innovative and spine-tingling paradigm through which to understand them.

Holland handles the history of Christianity very evenhandedly. He does not pull punches when documenting brutality done in Christ’s name, but neither does he shy away of almost fawning praise for those deserving of it.

The prose is engaging and the reading is well done, both by the author and the narrator.

I sincerely hope this book is widely read by many.

I’m overwhelmed with emotion.

The final pages left me overwhelmed with emotion; gratitude for what I’ve inherited, grief for what’s been lost, and a profound sense of awe at the enduring power of the Christian myth, of which we are all a part.