PROLOGUE: Winter Landscape. Life without money ; The great experiment
"GOD HAS ABANDONED US": Europe, 1570-1600. A monk on the run ; God's wind and waves ; Harsh frosts and burning sun ; A time of confusion and a fiery mountain ; Pilgrims and their hunger ; Truth and wine ; Wine in Vienna ; The lights go out ; Witches and spoiled harvests ; The truth in the stars ; Doctor Faustus ; Infinite worlds ; The tower of books
THE AGE OF IRON. Hortus botanicus ; Revolutionary places ; The city devours its children ; The magic of green cheese ; The great transformation ; A picture of the world ; Idle talk and fabrications ; A warning and a call to repent ; Tears too plentiful to count ; The revolution of the barrel of a musket ; Sell more to strangers ; The state as machine ; A profitable trade ; The curse of silver ; Officer, retired ; The subversive republic of letters ; Germanus incredibilis ; Virtue in the drowning cell ; Leviathan ; An inventory of morality
ON COMETS AND OTHER CELESTIAL LIGHTS. The madness of crowds ; The Antichrist ; The Messiah and the whore ; The fair on the ice ; The face of change ; The price of change ; Tapissier du roi ; The public sphere and the vices of bees ; The floating reverend
EPILOGUE: Supplement to The fable of the bees. Songbirds, wood lice, and corals ; Freedom and luxury ; Inherited compromises ; New metaphors ; The theology of the market ; The market and the fortress.
