About the Author

LEO DAMROSCH was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, among other honors. Currently the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of literature at Harvard University, he has written widely on eighteenth-century writers. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

"These pages...bring to astonishing life...an impossible man whose books made modern life possible....Immensely enjoyable and fast-paced." --Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club and American Studies "An incisive, accessible, and sensitive portrait . . . Damrosch has performed a signal service." Publishers Weekly "The erratic, inventive urgency of the life is all here. A delight to read." --Stacy Schiff The New York Times Book Review --

Considering Rousseau's prominence and historical importance, it is surprising to discover that (according to the publisher) this is the first single-volume biography in English. Damrosch, a professor of literature at Harvard University, has succeeded in presenting an incisive, accessible and sensitive portrait of this unpleasant, infuriating "restless genius." Sometimes, indeed, perhaps a little too sensitive: Damrosch's admiration can prevent his strongly condemning where condemnation is due. Rousseau (1712-1778) was the man, we should recall, who consigned his own infants to a foundling home, who sent a miserably small sum of money to his ailing former patroness and who bought an adolescent girl for nefarious purposes. Where Damrosch truly excels is in not only masterfully explaining the originality and meaning of mile, The Social Contract and the Confessions, but in relating those works to their author's conflicted, contradictory psyche. As Rousseau himself admitted, "I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices." Also, in vividly delineating the sage's final decade for the first time, Damrosch has performed a signal service: Maurice Cranston, who was writing a three-volume biography, died before completing the last part-thereby leaving readers in the dark as to Rousseau's fate. No longer. 43 b&w illus. Agent, Tina Bennett. (Nov. 1) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.