The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents

The Enlightenment: Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History and Culture) This is a brief, but concise, overview of the ideas spawned by the Enlightenment. The author provides documents to illustrate the the ideas of major figures of the enlightenment. The author indicates this book as suitable for a one week course session on the Enlightenment. Here we see the formative ideas of individual freedom, religious tolerance, and government by the will of the people displayed in the various source documents. Not an exhaustive treatment, but an excellent tickler to the study of this most important period in the history of human freedom.

After reading a bunch of these Bedford series in History books for a history class, I have really come to appreciate them. They are all pretty short, smooth reads that give a historical overview of the time, then include selections of documents written during that time related to the topic or whatever. As only having a vague knowledge of such things as the Enlightenment before reading these books my knowledge and understanding of such has been greatly increased, and I feel like the history is pretty well covered for the purpose of simple survey; in any case it's a good way to start learning about the time and point one in the right direction if further interested. I plan on reading a bunch more of these just on some parts of history that I'm rather ignorant about or only partially interested in, just to have a basic idea of the period and place. I particularly enjoyed this book on the Enlightenment simply because it was a really exciting time in history to reflect on and see the variety of new thoughts of new thinkers.