Books

A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

Basic Books, 2010
ISBN-10 0465014534
ISBN-13 978-0465014538
Hardcover, 384 pages

Blom here returns to the field of an earlier triumph (Enlightening the World: Encylopédie, the Book That Changed the Course of History, 2005) to take the measure of Encyclopédie’s editor, Denis Diderot. Placing Diderot in the natural habitat of Enlightenment philosophes, the Parisian salon circa 1750, Blom presents one Diderot habituated, hosted by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach. Baron who? readers may wonder, but d’Holbach attracted Diderot, Rousseau, and Hume to his salon and also penned atheistic philosophical tracts. If those endure less in intellectual history than the writings of his guests, d’Holbach’s hospitality receives Blom’s recognition as an incubator of the Enlightenment. Over the baron’s table, as conversationalists volleyed their subversions of the ancien régime and then crystallized the badinage into published works, Blom pauses to summarize its arguments. Those who might not be pleased with such paraphrasing might be placated by Blom’s interludes about the relationships among d’Holbach’s group, their japes, their lusts, their acrimonies: Rousseau, the great lover of humanity, hated Diderot and Hume. A perceptive, readable portrayal of a seminal coterie in the history of ideas. --Gilbert Taylor, BOOKLIST

“Tells the story of a set of remarkable individuals on the radical fringes of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, whose determinedly atheistic and materialist philosophies denied the existence of God or the soul…. [P]art biography and part polemic…it is also an iconoclastic rebuttal of what he describes as the ‘official’ history of the Enlightenment, the sort of history that he finds ‘cut in stone’ on a visit to the Paris Panthéon.  There the bodies of Voltaire and Rousseau were laid to rest with the blessing of the French state.  Neither deserved it, suggests Mr Blom.” THE ECONOMIST

Review of A Wicked Company in the FINANCIAL TIMES - March 28, 2011
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“A Wicked Company offers an entertainingly brisk introduction to some of the more intriguing byways of the Enlightenment, and in particular a humane and engaging portrait of Diderot, a man of startlingly modern ideas constrained by his humble circumstances to an almost-stifling public discretion.” David Andress, author of The Terror and 1789

“Historian Blom returns with a flowing, limpid account of an 18th-century French salon that housed the greatest names in French philosophy…. A swift, readable reminder that ideas are exciting – and have consequences.” KIRKUS REVIEWS

“A bold book. In A Wicked Company, Philipp Blom recaptures some of the limelight from the most famous figures of the French Enlightenment – Rousseau and Voltaire – by arguing that the more radical ideas of Diderot and Holbach would have more resonance in our own times. Written with pace and verve, the book evokes the vibrancy of the Parisian salons, bringing the protagonists to life – Diderot, Holbach, Rousseau, Hume, Madame de Geoffrin – and puts flesh-and-blood into the story of eighteenth-century intellectual debate.   While challenging the usual pantheon of Enlightenment thinkers, the book offers a lively and readable entry into the wider world of elite culture and ideas in the heady, exciting decades before the French Revolution.” Mike Rapport, author of 1848

“Mr. Blom skillfully evokes the characters of these young men…. Mr. Blom’s coupling of the lives of the philosophers with their thought helps make their ideas less desiccated than they might otherwise have appeared in the hands of a more academic writer. He has an admirable ability to get to the heart of what Spinoza, Hume or Voltaire argued.” WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Tells the story of a set of remarkable individuals on the radical fringes of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, whose determinedly atheistic and materialist philosophies denied the existence of God or the soul…. [P]art biography and part polemic…it is also an iconoclastic rebuttal of what he describes as the ‘official’ history of the Enlightenment, the sort of history that he finds ‘cut in stone’ on a visit to the Paris Panthéon.  There the bodies of Voltaire and Rousseau were laid to rest with the blessing of the French state.  Neither deserved it, suggests Mr Blom.” THE ECONOMIST

“Blom here returns to the field of an earlier triumph…to take the measure of Encyclopedie’s editor, Denis Diderot…. A perceptive, readable portrayal of a seminal coterie in the history of ideas.” BOOKLIST

“Blom reminds us that some 18th-century reformers were thoroughgoing materialists, scoffing at religion, even deist religion, and criticizing an oppressive, irrational society.” LIBRARY JOURNAL

The Vertigo Years - Europe 1900-1914

Basic Books, 2008
ISBN-10 0465011160
ISBN-13 978-0465011162
Hardcover, 512 pages

• Listen to an interview with Philipp about The Vertigo Years
• Interview on the Dutch television show Boeken (in Dutch)

Blom … brings an appealing energy and curiosity, and occasional humor, to his subject. … Blom has been remarkably successful at synthesizing a wide range of material, creating a panorama of the whole of European culture during this frantic time—and not just high culture, but the transformation of everyday life by revolutions in sex, shopping, science, and sociology.
Adam Kirsch, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

...an ambitious book - a one-volume assessment of the gravity-eroding, giddying sweep of European cultural, social, political and spiritual change that permeated the first 15 years of the 20th century. But Philipp Blom has pulled it off triumphantly... a work of narrative history at its best.
Juliet Nicolson, THE GUARDIAN

... engrossing history... a multifaceted, panoramic approach animated by vivacious narration of individual stories.
NEW YORKER

This splendid book…is a captivating depiction of an age of rapidity…In sparkling prose and with a trained eye for the telling detail and anecdote, Philipp Blom has sketched the outlines of a total history of the last long decade of the long nineteenth century.
TLS

Impressive and thought-provoking....encapsulate[s] complex historical and biographical events pithily and in an illuminating context...The book brings the fears, enthusiasms and blindspots of the period brilliantly to life.
THE ECONOMIST

a stimulating and original insight into an all-too-familiar period.. vivid... illuminating....
Piers Brendon, THE SUNDAY TIMES

An account of the fourteen years preceding the First World War, which saw the rise of a new world order, revealing the extent to which the twentieth century was essentially framed before the First World War.”
HISTORY TODAY

In this masterful presentation, the time in question is so richly laced with scientific bedazzlement, social ferment and cultural churning that a sense of giddying misadventure begins to feel strangely familiar.
KIRKUS REVIEW

In this enthralling, panoramic sweep of the 15 years preceding the First World War, Blom convincingly argues that it was this decade and a half that truly marked the start of the modern age, with all its grandeur and calamities.... With his impressive synthesis of historical literature, old and recent, and his finely drawn portraits of both emperors and workers, Blom's "Vertigo Years" will surely enlighten and interest another generation of readers in an era far in the past, yet worth understanding all the same.
GLOBE AND MAIL