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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Description: The Secular Enlightenment by Professor Margaret C. Jacob, has been called a major new history on how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday lives. Itβs a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers.Jacob, one of our most esteemed historians of the Enlightenment, reveals how this newly secular outlook was no...