Michael Burleigh is the author of "The Third Reich", winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. He has taught history at Oxford, Stanford, Rutgers, and Washington and Lee universities. Burleigh is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a frequent contributor to "The Sunday Times" and "The Sunday Telegraph. He lives in London.

In this masterful, stylish, and authoritative book, Michael Burleigh gives us an epic history of the battles over religion in modern Europe, examining the complex and often lethal ways in which politics and religion have interacted and influenced each other over the last two centuries. From the French Revolution to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century, Earthly Powers is a uniquely powerful portrait of one of the great tensions of modern history—one that continues to be played out on the world stage today.