THE SPELL, a story of human progress and how the west lost its soul

448pp., paperback, Mercury, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9781990956836

The authors explore the development of Western thought from Ancient Greece, through the Enlightenment, to today, focusing on how historical storytelling helps us make a chaotic world intelligible.

“The Spell succeeds in its most important aim: it provokes. It forces you to engage. It refuses indifference. And that, I think, is what makes it a serious book, one that will generate real debate, as all consequential writing should.” Michael Avery, financial journalist 

“A magistrial account of the history of Western civilisation through science, philosophy, economics and the soul quest of humankind ... It is an absorbing, riveting and captivating account of how the West lost it’s soul” Professor William Gumede, WITS University

David Buckham is the founder and CEO of Monocle, a management consulting firm based in Johannesburg. He is the author of Orthogonal Thinking. Buckham and Wilkinson are co-authors of The End of Money, The Age of Menace and Why Banks Fail.

Robyn Wilkinson, his colleague, is an industry writer with a focus on history and financial markets.