Clive Staples Lewis quietly sought to be the Dante of the modern world. His imaginative explications of the conditions of Hell and demonic “thought” are the best of their kind in the last 700 years. In The Screwtape Letters the experienced tempter Uncle Screwtape seeks to educate his nephew Wormwood in the proper way to undermine a human soul.

The muddled semi-thinking promoted by an educational system that ignores not only theology but basic logic proves one of the Infernal world’s greatest allies. It is further aided by a selfish notion of rights with no accompanying duties and modern man’s sentimental view of his virtues based only on kind emotions that require no sacrifice. But in many ways, the heights of the book are achieved as Uncle Screwtape rails against the unfairness of the God he has rejected, giving the kind of truly Christian vision of the power, beauty, wisdom, and boundless energy and love of God that atheists want no one to remember has always been the Catholic concept of the divine. To know yourself much better, and to know God well indeed, read this book.