Rather than envision themselves as agents of state-sponsored repression, the royal book censors of eighteenth-century France wished, through their reports and d

Robert Darnton's work is one of the main reasons that cultural history has become an exciting study central to our understanding of the past.

"Splendid…[Darnton gives] us vivid, hard-won detail, illuminating narrative, and subtle, original insight." —Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books Wi

Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in British and French history, writing, and ideas. Familiar to many as the British “year o