This is a fabulous book. The editor, Kim Sloan, makes the point in the introduction that whereas most people know about ‘the Vikings, the Tudors, the Civil War, the American and French Revolutions, the Victorians or the World Wars’ (p13) they know very little about the Enlightenment – and yet it’s the foundation of our modern world!

I knew very little about it myself until my most recent visit to the British Museum and discovered the Enlightenment Gallery. I enjoyed a talk about it at the Summer School for Teachers in 2008, which you can download if you are interested here: it’s called The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia. I subsequently heard more about it later that year at the History Teachers Conference from Mike Wohltman, a colleague I met at the History Summer School, and a teacher from Marden College in Adelaide. He was passionate about the need to teach students to value reason in decision-making and to use it to combat prejudice and ignorance.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2010/03/06/enlightenment-discovering-the-world-in-the-e... ( )