A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780465028658)

The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach's Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach's house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends. All brilliant minds, full of wit, courage, and insight, their thinking created a different and radical French Enlightenment based on atheism, passion, reason, and truly humanist thinking. A startlingly relevant work of narrative history, A Wicked Company forces us to confront with new eyes the foundational debates about modern society and its future.

Author: Philipp Blom
ISBN-10: 0465028659
ISBN-13: 9780465028658
Publisher: Basic Books
Language: English
Published: 05/08/2012
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.70w x 1.00d