Publisher's Synopsis
In 1777, a group of young men produced a book that aimed to tear the world apart and rebuild it, creating the foundation for what became known as the Enlightenment. The Encyclopedie was so dangerous and subversive that it was banned by the Pope and was seen as one of the causes of the French Revolution. The writers included some of the greatest minds of the age: Denis Diderot, the editor who had come to Paris to become a Jesuit but found the joys of the city too enticing; d'Alembert, one of the leading mathematicians of the eighteenth-century; Rousseau, the father of Romanticism; and Voltaire, the author of Candide. During the sixteen years it took to write, compile, and produce all twenty-seven volumes, the writers had to defy authorities and face exile, jail and censorship, as well as numerous internal falling outs and philosophical differences. Yet, in the end, they produced a book that would act as bomb that exploded at the centre of Western civilization and changed the world forever.
