“Learned and lively essays. . . . Each subject [Darnton] investigates―from the history of reading to Andrzej Wajda’s film ‘Danton’―has its own fascination.†―The New Yorker
At home in the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, Robert Darnton is a shrewd and entertaining guide to the shifting borderlands of history and culture. These wide-ranging essays appear under various headings: “Current Events†―this section includes the wonderful story of the moment in 1792 when all the delegates in the French Legislative Assembly kissed each other; “Media,†on television, pounding a newspaper beat, and tips to academics on how to get a book published; “The Printed Word,†with an essay on the history of books; “The Lay of the Land,†on aspects of intellectual history; and “Good Neighbors,†on the relation of history to literature anthropology, and the sociology of knowledge.
