George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century - Couverture rigide

Darnton, Robert

 
9780393057607: George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century

Synopsis

A master historian's excavations into the past unearth a world that is unexpected and compelling. 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 bracing insight, Robert Darnton shows us that the Enlightenment had false teeth alsothat it was not the Father of Our Modern World, responsible for all its advances and transgressions. In restoring the Enlightenment to human scale, Darnton locates its real aims, ambitions, and significance. So too with the French Revolution, another icon of the eighteenth century, approached here through the gossip, songs, and broadsides that formed the political nervous system of Paris in the Old Regime. Figures we think we knowVoltaire, Jefferson, Rousseau, Condorcet, even historians themselvesemerge afresh in Darnton's hands, their vitality, if not their teeth, intact. 17 b/w illustrations.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

Robert Darnton is the author of many award-winning works in French cultural history, and taught for years at Princeton and Harvard. He is a chevalier in the Légion d’Honneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780393337471: George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0393337472 ISBN 13 :  9780393337471
Editeur : W. W. Norton & Company, 2003
Couverture souple