Eighteenth-century England was a place of Englightenment and revolution: new ideas abounded in science, politics, transportation, commerce, religion, the arts. But even as England propelled itself into the future, it was preoccupied with notions of its past. Jeremy Black considers the interaction of history with knowledge and culture in 18th century England and shows the ways in which this engagement with the past shaped English historical writing. The past was used as a tool to illustrate the contemporary religious, social, and political debates which shaped the revolutionary advances of the era. Black shows this "present-centered" historical writing to be so valued and influential in the 18th century that its importance is greatly underappreciated in current considerations of the period. In his customarily vivid and sweeping approach, Black takes readers from print shop to church pew, courtroom to painter's studio to show how historical writing influenced the era, which in turn gave birth to the modern world.