The author of the celebrated The Dream of Reason vividly explains the rise of modern thought from Descartes to Rousseau.
Anthony Gottlieb is a former executive editor of the Economist and has held visiting fellowships at Harvard University and All Souls College, Oxford. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and The New York Times. He lives in New York.
Wondrously perceptive and exceptionally well-written
*Edward O. Wilson*
An entertaining introduction to a range of daring thinkers of the
long Enlightenment from Descartes to Rousseau. The author has a
light touch, and his book is a joy to read. He manages to convey
the excitement of ideas, and the humanity of thinkers, without
swamping readers with complexity.
*Economist*
Vivid and illuminating ... a compact but fairly comprehensive
survey, along with much historical detail ... Gottlieb's highly
readable book can be recommended as an engaging personal
introduction to some of our most brilliant moral and intellectual
ancestors.
*New York Review of Books*
He wears his learning lightly with an engaging and entirely
comprehensible sequence of crystal-clear paragraphs. ... His prose
is as witty as it is punctilious, peppered with clever, memorable
lines. ... Because Gottlieb does not take an excessively idealistic
view of the power of reason, he is able to put the achievements of
the thinkers in this book in their place, neither exaggerating nor
diminishing them.
*Financial Times*
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