Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and...
by David Bodanis
List Price:
Our Price: $2.69
You Save: $22.26 (89%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: David BodanisEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-10
ISBN: 0307237206
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Crown
Book Reviews of Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and...
Book Review: "You are a delight/You are tender/What pleasure I find in your arms." Immortal verse?
Summary: 2 Stars
I must thoroughly agree with the Publisher's Weekly reviewer of this book. Although it promises to deliver sensational events such as hot love affairs and outrageous behavior in addition to enlightening us about the brilliance of Voltaire and the genius of Emilie du Chatelet, this writer cannot live up to his own book's expectations or his clear attempt to pen a bestseller. What I felt I was getting was the diary entries of a peeping Tom who was busy sticking his nose into the sordid soap opera that was the "great love affair of the Enlightenment." I never had a sense that I was in the presence of a brilliant woman. Rather, Emilie comes off as a hedonistic and conflicted female, fatally insecure, and overshadowed by the even more insecure and narcissistic Voltaire. Although lots of information is imparted between the covers of this book, it never seems to gel into a cohesive or gripping whole, and I was left feeling flat, not only about the featured on-again, off-again eighteenth-century rock-star couple, but about eighteenth-century France altogether. No one seemed worth reading about. The lot of these folks apparently were stuck in their petty, class conscious, foolish ways, fawning over the court, slapping around the general population who weren't upper class, and generally being idiots. Perhaps the best I can say about this work is that it redeems science and rational thinking as well as the integrity of the individual, but only in a backhanded way. I'm afraid most readers will give up on this endless recounting of flaming passions and pettifoggery before getting halfway through. Lucky would they be too because they would happily miss the glaring and unforgivable fragment on p. 163: "But not only was the water cleaner in Cirey. There was also something more to Emilie's innovation." Editor please!
More Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and... reviews:
1 2 3
1 2 3
Authors Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalledby Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops:
William Tyndale: A Biographyby David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish Americaby Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Lifeby C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops:
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library)by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops:
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.75
Price in other shops:
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Professor and the Madman CDby Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamilton: A Lifeby Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.93
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equationby David Bodanis
Walker & Company; Published: 2005-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.39
Price in other shops:
Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern Worldby David Bodanis
Broadway; Published: 2006-02-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedomby Roger Pearson
Bloomsbury USA; Published: 2005-11-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $76.85
La Dame d'Esprit: A Biography of Marquise Du Chateletby Judith Zinsser
Viking Adult; Published: 2006-11-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.68
Price in other shops:
Passionate Minds: Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire, and the Great Love Affair of the Enlightenmentby David Bodanis
Three Rivers Press; Published: 2007-10-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.68
Price in other shops: