On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Chris Brooke wrote:
> And the book's been out for long enough now that the main lines of
> criticism of Israel's overall approach are reasonably focused:
There's also one more line of criticism: that his book is not original -- that the substance and best lines of his argument were all discovered and laid out by Margaret Jacob in her 1981 book, _The Radical Enlightenment_, and that Israel is only differing with her on the margin. (As I understand it, he thinks the movement started wholly in the Netherlands, where she thinks much of the original impetus came from English revolution and was transplanted to the Netherlands by refugees).
I haven't read his book yet, so I can't comment. But hers is very interesting, and quite a bit shorter.
Michael