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A Wicked Company

The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

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A Wicked Company

By: Philipp Blom
Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
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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.

©2010 Philipp Blom (P)2014 Audible Inc. France Humanism

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Excellent Review and Rescue of the Radical Enlightenment

Whereas the reputations of Voltaire and Rousseau are established in the development of Western thought, Diderot and Holbach are relatively obscure. In a well organised and eloquent book, Blom addresses and seeks to rectify this anomaly. Like his hero Diderot, Blom combines reason and passion in his writing.
The reader is clear but i wonder why no one with good French and preferably German was available.

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