Art, music, literature, philosophy & theology, science & mathematics, history & social sciences: how do they all fit together? For readers interested in seeing the “big pic-ture,” I commend to your attention The Matrix of Western Culture: Perspectives on History, the Arts and Ideas, organized around a grid with those six cultural categories on one axis and time, marked in centuries, on the other. The interior of the matrix comprises a representative repertoire described in a series of brief, readable essays. Well-read adults will, over the years, have encountered individual works in each of the categories that make up the matrix, scattered across the three millennia of its time-frame. Many readers will share my interest in organizing this knowledge into a coherent framework. The Matrix of Western Culture offers an accessible overview that one might be able to keep in mind all at once.