- 401 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
The Pulitzer Prizeâwinning historian explores history's most daring and transformational intellectual movement, the European and American Enlightenment.
In this engaging, provocative history, James MacGregor Burns illuminates the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, when audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World. They transformed thought, overturned governments, and inspired visionary political experiments. Fire and Light brings to life the revolutionary leaders who, armed with a new sense of human possibility, created the modern world. Burns traces the origins of a distinctive American Enlightenment to men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and their early encounters with incendiary European ideas about liberty and equality. It was these thinker-activists who framed the United States as a grand and continuing experiment in Enlightenment principles.
Today the same principles have taken on new urgency around the world: in the turmoil of the Arab world, in the former Soviet Union, and in China, as well as in the United States itself. What should a nation be? What should citizens expect from their government? Who should lead, and how can leadership be made both effective and accountable? What is happiness, and what can the state contribute to it? Burns's exploration of the ideals and arguments that formed the bedrock of our modern world shines a new light on these ever-important questions.
Praise for Fire and Light
"With this profound and magnificent book, Burns takes us into the fire's center. . . . Essential for deciphering the challenges of the world we will live in tomorrow." âMichael Beschloss, New York Timesâbestselling author of Presidential Courage
"James MacGregor Burns is a national treasure, and Fire and Light is the elegiac capstone to a career devoted to understanding the seminal ideas that made Americaâfor better and for worseâwhat it is." âJoseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awardâwinning author of Revolutionary Summer
"[A] captivating tale. . . . Briskly and beautifully told. . . . Superb." â Publishers Weekly
In this engaging, provocative history, James MacGregor Burns illuminates the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, when audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World. They transformed thought, overturned governments, and inspired visionary political experiments. Fire and Light brings to life the revolutionary leaders who, armed with a new sense of human possibility, created the modern world. Burns traces the origins of a distinctive American Enlightenment to men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and their early encounters with incendiary European ideas about liberty and equality. It was these thinker-activists who framed the United States as a grand and continuing experiment in Enlightenment principles.
Today the same principles have taken on new urgency around the world: in the turmoil of the Arab world, in the former Soviet Union, and in China, as well as in the United States itself. What should a nation be? What should citizens expect from their government? Who should lead, and how can leadership be made both effective and accountable? What is happiness, and what can the state contribute to it? Burns's exploration of the ideals and arguments that formed the bedrock of our modern world shines a new light on these ever-important questions.
Praise for Fire and Light
"With this profound and magnificent book, Burns takes us into the fire's center. . . . Essential for deciphering the challenges of the world we will live in tomorrow." âMichael Beschloss, New York Timesâbestselling author of Presidential Courage
"James MacGregor Burns is a national treasure, and Fire and Light is the elegiac capstone to a career devoted to understanding the seminal ideas that made Americaâfor better and for worseâwhat it is." âJoseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awardâwinning author of Revolutionary Summer
"[A] captivating tale. . . . Briskly and beautifully told. . . . Superb." â Publishers Weekly
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Yes, you can access Fire and Light by James MacGregor Burns in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Early American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction: Enlightenment as Revolution
- 1. The Revolution in Ideas
- 2. Rule Britannia?
- 3. Revolutionary Americans
- 4. France: Rule or Ruin?
- 5. Transforming American Politics
- 6. Britain: The Rules of Rulership
- 7. Napoleonic Rulership
- 8. Britain: Industrializing Enlightenment
- 9. France: The Crowds of July
- 10. The American Experiment
- 11. Britain: The Fire for Reform
- 12. The Negative of Liberty
- 13. The Transformation
- Notes
- Index
- Acknowledgments
- Also by James MacGregor Burns
- About the Author
- Copyright