Inspired by Voltaire’s advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century autho

Thomas Paine wrote the first part of The Rights of Man in 1791 as a response to the furious attack on the French Revolution by the British parliamentarian Edmun

Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology -- a strikingly fresh view of