Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Diderot and the Art of Thinking by Freely Andrew S. Curran ’86.

November 18, 2019

Tags Alumni Book

The winner of numerous honors, including a Kirkus Reviews Best Biography of 2019, this book delves into the life of the French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, best known for his work creating the first comprehensive Encyclopédie. However, as the author notes on his website, “[Diderot’s] most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity — for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century’s accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.”

In this account of the writer’s life, Curran, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University, describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion.

As a Wall Street Journal reviewer noted: “[The Encyclopédie’s] publication history is elegantly untangled by Mr. Curran, whose clear style and interest in the psychology of it all transforms it into a lively narrative…you are bound to be exhilarated by [Diderot’s] creativity.”