George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century - Softcover

Darnton, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393337472 ISBN 13: 9780393337471

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003

Synopsis

George Washington was inaugurated as president in 1789 with one tooth in his mouth, a lower left bicuspid. The Father of His Country had sets of false teeth that were made of everything but wood, from elephant ivory and walrus tusk to the teeth of a fellow human. With characteristic learning and bracing insight, Robert Darnton shows us that the Enlightenment had false teeth alsothat it was not the Father of Our Modern World, responsible for all its advances and transgressions. In restoring the Enlightenment to human scale, Darnton locates its real aims, ambitions, and significance. So too with the French Revolution, another icon of the eighteenth century, approached here through the gossip, songs, and broadsides that formed the political nervous system of Paris in the Old Regime. Figures we think we knowVoltaire, Jefferson, Rousseau, Condorcet, even historians themselvesemerge afresh in Darnton's hands, their vitality, if not their teeth, intact. 17 b/w illustrations.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Darnton is the author of many award-winning works in French cultural history, and taught for years at Princeton and Harvard. He is a chevalier in the Légion d’Honneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393337472
• ISBN 13: 9780393337471
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224