Description: Y2K! The world waits anxiously to see what millennial mischief crops up. But at Basic Books the year 2000 is cause for celebration. Fifty years ago Basic was founded as a home for works by outstanding scholars on topics of wide importance and broad general interest. Over the years our authors have inspired and informed, pleased and provoked generations of readers; indeed, many Basic titles have changed the very culture from which they emerged.

To commemorate our fiftieth year, we are proudly reissuing a selection of our most distinguished books from the last half-century. Here, in brand new packages, with new introductions and editorial comments by leading contemporary figures, are ten exemplars of the intellectual vigor that is the hallmark of Basic Books: classic titles by John Bowlby, Sigmund Freud, Josef Breuer, Claude Levi-Strauss, James Q. Wilson, Clifford Geertz, and Michael Walzer. That books like these remain in print is itself a testament to their enduring value. By calling attention to their sustained presence we hope to introduce new readers to landmark works that will continue to roil cultural waters for decades to come.

In this dazzling series of essays, Robert Darnton exhumes the strange and wonderful world views of the ordinary and extraordinary people inhabiting the cities, towns, and countryside of France in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment".

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