Ask someone today where Western Civilization originated, and he or she might say Greece or Rome. But what is the ultimate source of Western Civilization? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. In the new paperback edition of his critically-acclaimed book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Woods goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. Gifts such as modern science, free-market economics, art, music, and the idea of human rights come from the Catholic Church, explains Woods. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you'll learn: Why modern science was born in the Catholic ChurchHow Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam SmithHow the Catholic Church invented the universityWhy what you know about the Galileo affair is wrongHow Western law grew out of Church canon lawHow the Church humanized the West by insisting on the sacredness of all human lifeNo 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.