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inhumane laws and customs, and other evils in contemporary society. Yet even Candide—a work of fi ction that few would fail to recognize as a classic Enlightenment text—is absent from this volume. Robertson hints at the power of fi ction when he briefl y discusses Robert Darnton’s thesis about the infl uence on public opinion of best-selling “semi-pornographic novels” such as Th érèse philosophe and Anecdotes sur Mme du Barry in the run-up to the French Revolution. But since in his view “the Revolution was the antithesis of Enlightenment” (116), the implication is that fi ction may have helped to undermine, but cannot help to defi ne, the Enlightenment’s intellectual core. Taken on its own terms, Robertson’s very short introduction stands tall among Enlightenment primers, suitable for advanced university students and general readers alike. Th is book successfully conveys the author’s belief that the Enlightenment was mainly concerned with innovative thought about society, and that “what is particularly interesting about Enlightenment thought was its willingness to engage with change in this world independent of the next, to think about what might constitute ‘progress’” (130).