Ask a college student today what he knows about the Catholic Church and his answer might come down to one word: "corruption." But that one word should be "civilization." Western civilization has given us the miracles of modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of the rule of law, a unique sense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, a philosophy grounded in reason, and innumerable other gifts that we take for granted as the wealthiest and most powerful civilization in history. But what is the ultimate source of these gifts? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. Woods's story goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you'll learn:

* Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church

* How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith

* How the Catholic Church invented the university

* Why what you know about the Galileo affair is wrong

* How Western law grew out of Church canon law

* How the Church humanized the West by insisting on the sacredness of all human life

No institution has done more to shape Western civilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church-and in ways that many of us have forgotten or never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recovering this lost truth.