Sometimes I find a history book that makes me think of friends who would be outraged by the book. This is one of those books.

God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World explores the history of religious persecution and how it shapes governments today. This is an ugly profile of an era that the Catholic Church should be ashamed of. But it is also an ugly profile of what amounts to the Protestant inquisition in England. And a condemnation of the tools that many governments use today for persecuting their own people.

The history of the Inquisition (whether it be Spanish, Roman or Protestant) is treated with academic professionalism. The reader will learn about how the Inquisition impacted virtually everybody, from Popes to Puritans to Native Americans. If you are like me and only have a passing familiarity with the Inquisition, you’ll learn a lot (trust me, it’s much more than what you see in Monty Python).

But the real interesting parts of the book come when the author finishes painting the historical picture and then overlays that to contemporary society. The Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogation” is called into question and equated to torture chambers of the Inquisition. The author does the same to many totalitarian regimes, from petty dictators to the Soviet empire. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it will make even the most die hard supporter of the Patriot Act or Guantanamo reflect on what we’ve empowered our government to do.

In the end, I found myself restless after reading this book. I want to learn more about the Inquisition, but I also want to rethink how we allows government influence impact our lives. A book that makes you pause like that is usually a good one. This one certainly is.