Scholars of political thought based at Newcastle University, Armstrong and Gray analyze the political writings of British historian and social theorist Tawney (1880-62) chronologically to dispel the illusion of coherence that modern scholarship has constructed with bits and pieces from here and there. They challenge the conventional view by arguing that the various political ideas he proposed are not necessarily compatible, and that though he retained his faith throughout his life, he abandoned Christianity as an organizing principle and his early doctrine that politics without Christianity was deficient. Distributed in the US by Philosophy Documentation Center. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)