"In 1750, a group of young men in Paris set out on a modest translation of a dictionary which would, they hoped, pay their way for a few years. The project grew into the greatest publishing venture of its day, a work considered so dangerous and subversive that it was banned by the pope and its authors threatened with imprisonment and execution. When it was finished a quarter of a century later, it filled 27 volumes and contained 72,000 articles, 16,500 pages and 17 million words. It became known as the great Encyclopedie by Diderot and D'Alembert." "The writers of the Encyclopedie included some of the greatest minds of the day, among them Denis Diderot, Jean d'Alembert, Voltaire, and Rousseau, a group marked by close friendships and spectacular breakups, by changing allegiances, bitterness, and great generosity in the face of constant danger. The making of the Encyclopedie is the story of the greatest intellectual enterprise of the eighteenth century, the triumph of reason in an unreasonable time. Historian and novelist Philipp Blom recreates the lives of the protagonists on a vivid historical canvas."--BOOK JACKET.