A nation must think before it acts.
Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The British Enlightenment (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000).
Arthur Herman, How the Scots Created the Modern World: The True Story of How Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It (New York: Crown, 2002).