Writer, physician, philosopher and lexicographer, Émile Littré was commissioned by Hachette in 1841 to compile a new dictionary of the French language. The work, finally started in 1845, took nearly 30 years to complete, during which period France went through a great deal of turbulence. Littré wrote this companion volume, a remarkable novella-length essay, Comment j’ai fait mon dictionnaire (‘How I Made My Dictionary’), in 1880, which was translated and published for the first time in Eng...

Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyHow to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy?This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly ...

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man is a dialogue written by the Marquis de Sade while incarcerated in 1782, expressing his atheism by having the dying libertine convince the priest of the mistakes of a pious life. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Michel Foucault's most admired book is an incisive history of changing attitudes toward mental illness of Western Europe between 1500 and 1800.Madness and Civilization investigates the archeology of madness, tracing shifting perceptions through changes in the culture, laws, politics, philosophy, and medical practices of the West. In the late Middle Ages, insanity was still considered part of everyday life and people who were commonly labeled fools and luna...

**The landmark history of France and French culture in the eighteenth century, a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.“Robert Darnton has the inquisitiveness of an investigative reporter, the thoroughness of a rigorous scholar, and the sensitivity of a novelist.” —New Republic**When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously ...

In 1785, a sensational trial began in Paris that would divide the country and captivate Europe. A leading Catholic cardinal and scion of one of the most distinguished families in France stood accused of forging the queen's signature to obtain the most expensive piece of jewelry in Europe: a 2,800-carat diamond necklace. Where were the diamonds? Was the cardinal innocent? Was, for that matter, the queen? The revelations from the trial would bedevil the French monarchy as the country descend...

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 hist...

Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden's seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family's fortunes, and Françoise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most op...

Franco-British Society Literary Prize WinnerShortlisted for The Duff Cooper Prize.Long-listed for The Samuel Johnson Prize.A "One Hundred Best Books of the Decade" in The Times (London)"Judicious, balanced, and admirably clear at every point. This is quite the calmest and least abusive history of the Revolution you will ever read." —Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books

One of the key figures of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot was a passionate critic of conventional morality, society and religion. Among his greatest and most well-known works, these two dialogues are dazzling examples of his radical scientific and philosophical beliefs. In Rameau's Nephew, the eccentric and foolish nephew of the great composer Jean-Philippe Rameau meets Diderot by chance, and the two embark on a hilarious consideration of society, music, literature, politics, moral...

'These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself' Reveries of the Solitary Walker is Rousseau's last great work, the product of his final years of exile from the society that condemned his political and religious views. Returning to Paris the philosopher determines to keep a faithful record of the thoughts and ideas that come to him on his perambulations. Part reminiscence, part reflection, enlivened by anecdote and encounters, the Reveries f...

**“One of my favorite books.” —Ryan Holiday, *New York Times-*bestselling author and podcaster of The Daily StoicThis classic biography of Michel de Montaigne—the Renaissance philosopher and a founding father of humanism—is a heartfelt argument for the importance of intellectual freedom and tolerance.**Written by one of the 20th century’s most popular authors during WWII, Montaigne is a passionate and readable biography of the great Renaissance humanist. S...