Ritchie Robertson is Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. He is a member of the board of the Voltaire Foundation which promotes research on the Enlightenment, and is a frequent reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement.
cogently expressed and scrupulously documented ... The
Enlightenment, he believes, has an urgent message for our time
-- Keith Thomas * London Review of Books *
the book is written out of genuine curiosity and palpable
enthusiasm. Robertson's range allows him to make many
illuminating comparisons and some provocative juxtapositions
... This is surely the best and most up to date single-volume
study of the Enlightenment that we currently possess. It will
inform the general reader while also often provoking, delighting
and surprising the specialist. -- David Womersley * Standpoint
*
The Enlightenment by Ritchie Robertson is a fine examination
of how the enlightenment changed the world in different ways in
different places - scintillating. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore *
Aspects of History Books of the Year *
a work that is at once readable, authoritative and wide-ranging ...
a handsome single volume, complete with nearly 30 images from the
great first editions of the period. The author is a professor of
German literature and thought at Oxford University, but whatever
the specific subject addressed, the quality of scholarship is
uniformly high. -- Jesse Norman * Spectator *
learned, capacious and gloriously rich ... "The first Quality of an
Historian," David Hume wrote to a friend, "is to be true and
impartial; the next to be interesting." Judged by such a standard,
Robertson must be reckoned a historian of very high quality indeed.
His book is not just learned and balanced, it is also - in the
noblest tradition of the Enlightenment itself - principled and
humane. -- Tom Holland * The Times *
Mr. Robertson is a splendid writer, astoundingly versed in European
letters and gifted at vividly sketching the views of the
"Enlighteners." ... Mr. Robertson, armed with a prodigious
knowledge of the Enlightenment's literary output, has captured the
tone and spirit of this milieu. -- Jeffrey Collins * Wall Street
Journal *
Mr. Robertson is a splendid writer, astoundingly versed in European
letters and gifted at vividly sketching the views of the
"Enlighteners" ... [who] has written a fitting tribute to his
subject ... Often characterized as a great philosophical movement,
it is better understood as a style, a set of shifting public habits
and attitudes. Mr. Robertson, armed with a prodigious knowledge of
the Enlightenment's literary output, has captured the tone and
spirit of this milieu. -- Jeffrey Collins * Wall Street Journal
*
Masterly...[an] epic survey of Enlightened minds, ideas and
policies across Europe and the Americas...Mr Robertson sweetens
erudition with humanity, much as his subjects did. Science and
statecraft, which are amply chronicled, yield to compassion,
sympathy and a self-critical outlook that welcomes experimentation
and changes of mind. Not least among its lessons for today, The
Enlightenment shows how its sages learned "to manage even
Disputes with Civility". -- The Economist
A thoroughly satisfying history of an era that was not solely about
reason but was "also the age of feeling, sympathy and sensibility."
... a magisterial history of Europe and the West, featuring more
than 100 chapters ... An entirely absorbing doorstop history of
ideas. * Kirkus Reviews *
The analyst has to stick to the ideas. Robertson does this
expansively and lucidly, not just reporting them, but arguing them
out in admirable thumbnail sketches, rich in detail, of literary as
well as philosophical and also scientific works. -- T.J. Reed *
Catholic Herald *
A professor of German language and literature, Robertson knows that
writing good history means clearing away easy preconceptions. His
work implies that to understand the Enlightenment, or perhaps any
period, it is less useful to distil a set of theses than to
identify a group of questions that people agreed were important,
even if they furnished very different answers. Thus he avoids
sweeping generalizations and focuses on the particular: he has an
eye for revealing anecdotes and memorable quotations. ... When he
portrays the major figures of the period itself and identifies the
complex questions they raised, Robertson transports us to the past
as only a master historian can, allowing us to empathize with
perspectives different from our own. As a comprehensive study of
the period itself, Robertson's The Enlightenment towers over
all others I have encountered. -- Gary Saul Morson * Claremont
Review of Books *
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