Saint Augustine of Hippocrisy

He stole pears he didn't even want. He lied to his friends about hookups he never had. He spent fifteen years with a woman he never bothered to name, ditched his mother at the docks in Carthage, and prayed the most honest prayer in history: "Lord, give me chastity, but not yet."

Then he became a saint and made his guilt your problem.

Saint Augustine of Hippo is one of the most important thinkers in Western history, and also the reason you feel bad about a second slice of cake. This savagely funny takedown follows him from party boy to bishop, through nine years in a cult that believed God was trapped inside melons, a mid-life meltdown under a fig tree, and a theology that declared every baby born guilty and blamed the whole mess on intercourse.

Inside you'll find:

• The pear heist that launched a doctrine of human depravity
• Monica, the saint who out-guilted her own son across an entire sea
• Why Augustine said Adam could have controlled his body by willpower, and the man who sang from his backside that he cited as proof (this is real, it is in City of God)
• The roast peacock he kept in a cupboard for a year to prove hell works
• How "compel them to come in" went from a dinner party parable to a license for coercion
• The time he beat Descartes to "I think, therefore I am" by about 1,200 years