Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World

Library Journal12/01/2013
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Burns (Woodrow Wilson Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Williams Coll.; Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom) is one of the most respected scholars of American history. One reads his books expecting them to be well researched and compellingly written; this latest title, published when Burns was 95, is no exception. There's little new in it, but the way he brings events and ideas together supports his long-held views on the transactional nature of leadership: how ideas and values—Enlightenment values of human worth and empowerment—motivated both leaders and followers to achieve commonly held ends. Burns focuses on England, France, and the fledgling United States and on the period between the early 1600s and the first decades of the 19th century.