The Age of Voltaire, the ninth volume of The Story of Civilization, is an in-depth examination of France and England in the first half of the eighteenth century. In this masterful work, listeners will encounter the English ideas that inspired the Enlightenment in France; the salons of Paris, where the wits and thinkers of all Europe gathered to exchange ideas; the philosophes - intellectuals and artists who consulted with kings and queens; Voltaire himself, the incarnation of the Enlightenment; Mme. Pompadour, who seduced Louis XV and through him influenced French policy; the Augustan Age in English literature; and the growing parasitism of the aristocracy and rising power of the commercial class.
II. The Struggle for the Regency
I. Prelude to the Industrial Revolution
II. George II and Queen Caroline
IV. The War of the Austrian Succession
VI. Voltaire in Germany: 1750–54
I. The Intellectual Environment
X. The Impact of Science upon Civilization
II. The Blind, the Deaf, and the Dumb
II. Voltaire and the Encyclopédie
III. The Theology of Earthquakes