A Wicked Company

by Blom, Philipp

• ISBN13: 9780465014538
• ISBN10: 0465014534
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-02
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

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.InA 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 Companyforces us to confront with new eyes the foundational debates about modern society and its future.

Author Biography

Philipp Blom is the author of The Vertigo Years, Enlightening the World, and To Have and To Hold. He contributes articles to the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian, among others. He lives in Vienna, Austria.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
Fathers and Sons
City of Lights	p. 1
Journeys	p. 15
Encyclopédie: Grand Ambitions	p. 37
Chez M. Holbach	p. 55
Audacity	p. 75
Christianity Unveiled	p. 91
Only the Wicked Man Lives Alone	p. 113
Marvelous Machines
Le Bon David	p. 133
A Natural Philosophy	p. 151
Sheikhs of the Rue Royale	p. 165
Grandval	p. 181
The Bear	p. 199
The Island of Love
Crime and Punishment	p. 217
The Most Ungrateful Dogg in the World	p. 231
Fame and Fate	p. 245
The Empress and the Bean King	p. 257
Sex in Paradise	p. 271
Fifty Hired Priests	p. 291
Epilogue A Stolen Revolution	p. 305
A Glossary of Protagonists	p. 319
A Very Selective Bibliography	p. 323
Notes	p. 327
Index	p. 345
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