With his uncanny ability to spark life in the past, Robert Darnton re-creates three historical worlds in which censorship shaped literary expression. In eighteenth-century France, censors navigated the intricacies of royal privilege in a working collaboration with authors and booksellers on the maki[...]

His latest book vibrates with the strange political and literary energies of ancien regime France. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France traces the merging of philosophical, sexual, and anti-monarchical interests into the pulp fiction of the 1780s, banned books that make fascinating[...]

George Washington was inaugurated as president in 1789 with one tooth in his mouth, a lower left bicuspid. The Father of His Country had sets of false teeth that were made of everything but wood, from elephant ivory and walrus tusk to the teeth of a fellow human. With characteristic learning and bra[...]

Listen to "An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748-50" for songs from Poetry and the Police Audio recording copyright [copyright] 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. In spring 1749, Francois Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly [...]

A great book about an even greater book is a rare event in publishing. Darnton's history of the "Encyclopedie" is such an occasion. The author explores some fascinating territory in the French genre of "histoire du livre," and at the same time he tracks the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. He is co[...]

Renowned historian Robert Darnton - a pioneering scholar in the history of the book, and a leading voice in the debate about the digital future of books and knowledge - distils his experience and insight. The era of the book as the unrivalled source and vehicle for knowledge is coming to an end. Dig[...]