Brilliant exposition of the intellectual history of the West from Leonardo to Hegel. Bronowski later did "The Ascent of Man" on PBS. Bronowski and Mazlish do a masterful job tracing the development of Western thought. Their conclusions on individualism and freedom are spot on. The book was published in 1962. They praise dissent as the highest form of freedom. How disgusted they must have been during the course of the 60's and 70's when dissent turned into repudiation of all that had been purchased with so much blood and treasure. This kind of volume is now reviled as the story of "dead white men". We now face an enemy in the Moslem world who would destroy all of that work. If our survival is achieved it will be because of the ideas of these "dead white men" and the civilization they and others like them created.