..".a finely crafted study...The wealth of her scholarly evidence aside, Tilburg develops her] arguments with magisterial care, resulting in a book that deserves the attention of all students of contemporary French history. Highly recommended." - Choice

In France's Third Republic, secularism was, for its adherents, a new faith, a civic religion founded on a rabid belief in progress and the Enlightenment conviction that men (and women) could remake their world. And yet with all of its pragmatic smoothing over of the supernatural edges of Catholicism, the Third Republic engendered its own...