The Enlightenment A Brief History with Documents

Gain insight into The Enlightenment from the era's most influential thinkers as Enlightenment explores the impact this time period had on the political, religious, and educational landscape of the day.

Margaret C. Jacob (PhD, Cornell University) is distinguished professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published widely on science, religion, the Enlightenment, freemasonry, and the origins of the Industrial Revolution. Her first book, The Newtonians and the English Revolution (1976), won the Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Her most recent monograph is Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (2006). She is currently at work on a book about the first knowledge economy.