Remi Brague is a professor of philosophy at the Universite de Paris I-Sorbonne and at the University of Munich. He has also taught at Boston University. Brague is the author of four previous books, including, most recently, "Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization. Teresa Lavender Fagan has translated more than a dozen books, including Jean-Claude Schmitt's "Ghosts in the Middle Ages and Jean Bottero et al.'s "Ancestors of the West, both published by the University of Chicago Press.