Gianluca Mori's book analyzes atheistic thought in the historical period between the second half of the 1600s and the second half of the 1700s. Spinoza and D'Holbach are set respectively as the initial and final point of this path articulating through the figures of Cudworth and Bayle, the clandestine atheists (Meslier, Boulanvillier, Du Marsais and Fréret), Toland, Collins, Hume, Voltaire and Diderot. A complex vision of the concept of atheism in modern age is sketched in the text. In the Author’s perspective, the individuation of the path of modern atheism marks its progressive emancipation from its intellectually and morally negative connotation and, more generally, underlies the overcoming of a further stage in the uneven route towards the affirmation of an open society.