Full name: The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History

Author: Robert Darnton Year: 1984 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Award winners, History, Non Fiction, Essays Culture: France Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780465012749 0465012744

When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730's held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the 18th century version of "Little Red Riding Hood" did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton attempts to answer in this dazzling series of essays that probe the ways of thought in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment." Similar books: Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso The Control of Nature by John McPhee United States by Gore Vidal On Immunity by Eula Biss Miami by Joan Didion The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows Chancellorsville by Stephen W. Sears The Truth About Stories by Thomas King Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson White Mughals by William Dalrymple A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki The Promised Land by Nicholas Lemann The Internal Enemy by Alan Taylor Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry Indian Givers by Jack Weatherford The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin To Be a Slave by Julius Lester