Acclaimed historian, Philipp Blom, retraces the fortunes and characters of the men, that from the 1750s to the 1770s in the Paris salon of Baron Paul Thirty Holback had debated with intellectual daring and produced revolutionary ideas. These brilliant minds full of wit, courage, and humanity in their thinking created a different and radical French Enlightenment based on atheism, passion, empathy, and a compellingly insightful perspective on society.--[Book cover]