Dominion

Why it’s on the list: Tom Holland’s argument that the moral assumptions the secular West treats as self-evident — the dignity of the weak, the suspicion of power, universal human worth — are downstream of Christianity, and that even the critiques of Christianity are made in its own vocabulary.

Where I heard about it

• My own reading list — saved as a bare Amazon link to my “Books To Read” note, sometime between 2024 and 2026.
• Replies to @typesfast — named again in the replies to his question “What’s the best history book you’ve read?”, June 2025. The full list from that thread lives on What’s the best history book… (tweet).

Connections

• Tom Holland — author.
• Ideological Family Tree — the portfolio idea this sits closest to; the book is a genealogy of a moral vocabulary.
• Christianity · Religious Intellectualism — the subject and the field.
• What’s the best history book… (tweet) — recommendation #2: named in this crowd-sourced thread.