Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Age of Voltaire, the ninth volume of The Story of Civilization, is an in-depth examination of France and England in the first half of the eighteenth century. In this masterful work, listeners will encounter the English ideas that inspired the Enlightenment in France; the salons of Paris, where the wits and thinkers of all Europe gathered to exchange ideas; the philosophes-- intellectuals and artists who consulted with kings and queens; Voltaire himself, the incarnation of the Enlightenment; Mme. Pompadour, who seduced Louis XV and through him influenced French policy; the Augustan Age in English literature; and the growing parasitism of the aristocracy and rising power of the commercial class.