Suggested Readings: Enlightenment Thought and Action

The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment
By Roy Porter
ISBN: 0-393-04872-1

"Porter does make a valuable point. Compared with the French experience, England's Enlightenment seems a tame affair, tolerant of latitudinarian Protestantism, contented with the political liberties preserved by Britain's balanced constitution and eager to accommodate itself to the nation's unparalleled commercial prosperity. English thinkers were more concerned about defining sociability than about undermining the established church and state." —T.H. Breen New York Times

Locke in America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era
By ome Huyler
ISBN: 0-7006-0642-4

"Huyler carries his new and persuasive interpretation of Locke onto the battleground of American historiography and plants the flag of Lockean liberalism, rightly understood, atop the high moral and ideological ground of the founding of the American republic. His passion is evident, but appropriately restrained. He treats the victims of his critique—and it's a long and distinguished list—graciously and fairly. He also writes well, with flashes of eloquence." —Steven M. Dworetz author of The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution

The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World
By Jenny Uglow
ISBN: 0-374-19440-8

"The Lunar Men is a grand story - imagine a kind of historical version of Atlas Shrugged set in 18th-century England . . . Of course, here James Watt, with the help of the industrialist Boulton, starts, rather than stops, the engine of the world. Like Rand's heroes, these over-reachers - several of whom began their careers as boy apprentices - were not merely gifted, they were determined and indefatigable." —Michael Dirda Washington Post

Self-Help
By Samuel Smiles
ISBN: 0-255-36365-6

"Even the specialist might find new insights about such familiar figures as Arkwright, . . . Stephenson, Watt, Wedgewood, and Wellington. For the general reader, Smiles repeatedly awakens curiosity about the long roll of less famous inventors, surgeons, scientists, scholars, linguists, lawyers, musicians, artists, and philanthropists from whose lives he draws the central lesson that disciplined diligence can suffice to make good the want of genius, no less than material means, in conquering every vexation." —Lord Harris of High Cross