An engaging and accessible overview of the Enlightenment as a global phenomenon, with updated material and additional online resources.

1. What is Enlightenment?; 2. Coffee houses and consumers: the social context of Enlightenment; 3. Enlightenment and government; new departure or business as usual?; 4. Political economy: profit, trade, empire and an Enlightenment science; 5. Exploration, cross-cultural contact, and the ambivalence of the Enlightenment; 6. When people are property: the problem of slavery in the Enlightenment; 7. Enlightenment thinking about gender; 8. Science and the Enlightenment: God's order and man's understanding; 9. The rise of modern paganism? Religion and the Enlightenment; 10. The end of the Enlightenment: conspiracy and revolution?; Brief biographies; Suggestions for further reading; Electronic sources for further research; Index.

Dorinda Outram is Clark Professor Emerita of History at the University of Rochester, New York. Her previous publications include Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (1982), Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979 (1988) and The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class and Political Culture (1989).