The First Fundamentalist?
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 2/25/2002
A book that purports to show how the rupture first opened up between a humanist view of life and a fundamentalist religious approach was bought in a best-bid auction by senior editor Tim Duggan at HarperCollins. Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther and the Rupture of Europe is a study of the philosophical clash between Erasmus and Martin Luther that continues to divide the world right up to the present day. The author is Michael Massing, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a MacArthur "genius" award winner, who has been reading deeply into the story of the two men, their heated rivalry and the opposing schools of human thought they came to represent. The buy was of North American rights, from agent Kathy Robbins, and it's too early yet, says Duggan, to predict a likely publication date.
