Nancy Mitford was a brilliant writer, and the bedrock of virtually all her works - even the histories - was satire. And, true to the first law of all satirists, she takes no prisoners, even in dealing with such luminaries as Voltaire and his lover, Mme du Chatelet. From the very start, for instance, she tells us that Voltaire rarely had any original thoughts: his true genius was in his turn of phrase. In fact, to Mme du Chatelet's great embarassment, he was likely impotent, was virtually banished from Versailles, flirted outrageously with the openly gay King Frederick of Prussia and, later, developed an infatuation for his own niece.

Mme du Chatelet does rather better in Mitford's estimation - she is portrayed as a gifted scientist and an independently important literary figure - but as a lover, she too is deeply flawed. Time and again, she drove Voltaire close to bankruptcy with her gambling debts. And her premature death was brought on by childbirth - not Voltaire's baby, mind, but those of her "toy boy" lover. Yet it is clear that, for all that, she had met in Voltaire her true life partner, and within their own adulterous union, they tolerated each other's infidelities with good grace.

A classic chronicle of human foibles by an author who is utterly unintimidated by her biographical subjects.

When I set out to write a book, "A Visit From Voltaire" imagining the return of Voltaire to the 21st century, this is the book that hooked me before I moved into the primary sources. And it remains one of the best books to date, despite a few little hitches in her facts, for readability, entertainment and capturing the spirit of Voltaire's middle years. Anybody who reads it will finish with a wonderful understanding of the man's energy, resilience and courage. A must.
Dinah Lee Küng

I couldn't put this book down, and tore through it in a matter of days. Despite being a voracious reader, it's (sadly) seldom that such a book comes along for me. The main draw for me in purchasing this book is being an avid fan of Voltaire. I had wondered just how strongly the "love story" element of the book would play out, as I'd known prior to purchasing this book that all of the intimate correspondence between Voltaire and Emilie has been lost. I'm not a "love story" kind of person, and was hoping this book would provide more of a strong picture into the personalities, foibles, strengths, habits, and routines of Voltaire primarily, and Emilie secondarily. I was not disappointed.

If you count yourself a lover of Voltaire -- the man and his writings -- then this book is truly a must-read for you. I've read much of his essays, philosophy, short stories, et cetera, and finally (to my immense delight) feel I "know" the man.

The personalities and temperaments of both Voltaire and Emilie were rather as I'd figured they would be, although there were a couple of genuine surprises -- some flattering, some not so flattering.

What continues to make me curious is how these two persons defined the word "love"...the dynamics of their relationship and love was interesting, and sometimes confusing, to say the very least. Ah well, I'm speaking of dead persons here. Respect for their personages and for the deceased prohibit me from going further. And besides, after nine years of marriage, I too admit the word "love" has a myriad of nuances.

Please enjoy this book! Ecrasez l'infame!

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." (Votaire)

"I do not agree with what you are saying, but I fight for the death in your right to say it." (Voltaire)

Without knowing why, I like Voltaire. I want to learn more of him. I even have seven plays of his, which are so narrowly distributed. Apart from anything he wrote, the man himself was to all ends a jumping soul. He knew how to stir things up. He knew how to seduce or how to aggravate. Yes, Voltaire had a sense of humour. But his social criticisms were important enough to land him in trouble. His twelve month stay at the Bastille was no comfort, though unlike other prisoners he had priviledges of everyday visitors.

On to Candide and Zadig. I never much liked Candide: it was too unbelievable and too episodic. Here, Voltaire shows that all is NOT for the best in 'the best of all the possible worlds.' The philosopher Leibnz, who held that our world is fine, is wrong says Voltaire. So, then, in the book he shows all the misfortune he can muster. But I came to see that Leibniz had meant, simply, that our world has possibility, growth, apparent free will, and a search-for-God. Even though things go wrong, this world is better than one of 'automatic goodness." T. S. Eliot urged the same thing to the behaviourist B. F. Skinner. Surely, then, the world is not so bad. The conditions, yes, but the gift of fighting for a greater good is of itself a greator good. Voltaire seems to have forgotten this, I think. And yet, he did not hate the world. He sneered to his France, but he lived in England for a year or two, where he praised English culture. Imagine a Frenchmen, of noteriety even, praising England, especially in that time! Voltaire had courage and is thus a kind of hero.

But Zadig I like: it had a gentle humour which can be read to small boys. It deals with morality, like the allegory of Adam and Eve do.Another story, called I think 'the Child of Nature' is as well smoothly written. It describes the development of a young man who discovers Christianity on the one hand, and Christendom on the other!

Voltaire has a touch of a poet in him. He can dress up language in clever little ways. One can tell, instantly, that he writes fast and wants to entertain. Some will say this wit not even Shakespeare had (at least not in person anyway).

His technique is satire: he likes to make fun of his enemy via mockery. He does not simply tell us freedom is the way, he goes on and on in bringing home the message that the men in power are laughable idiots.

Voltaire himself was a kind of showboat, with flashes of conceit I suspect. But I would have liked to have met the man. He seems to have known how to live fully.

I hope I have helped.

Although, perhaps, it wasn't ment to be, Volatire's work is uplifting. Sometimes a man faces something that enraged him to such a depth, he either has to cry or laugh about it. Its good to be able to laugh about injustice, betrayal, and every other inborn, basic flaw of the pompous human race we all have the pleasure to be part of. This is one of the best satires I've ever read.

Candide is one of my most favorite philosophical works because of the humor, honesty, and original perspective that Voltaire brings to this story. This translation is recommended because it also contains many other excellent works from Voltaire, such as Zadig and Micromegas. The translator's notes are very helpful, and in many cases shed light upon Voltaire's intended meaning when the English is not able to convey everything.

The French writer Voltaire's (1694-1778) novel 'Candide' is a biting, satirical, cynical, and inimical story of an inexperienced and innocent young man who is much misled early in life by Pangloss, his philosophy teacher. Tragi-comical in style, the whole work is certainly the spiritual forefather of 'Waiting for Godot', but it is vastly inventive, the satire is funny, and the action rollicks around the world in a rapid succession of colorful and exciting places. Candide alternately fights for his life, flees for his life, ponders the meaning of life, makes his fortune, or simply travels to stave off boredom. If this were a Mel Brooks film it would be a cross between 'Blazing Saddles', 'Men In Tights', and 'Life Stinks'. There is a grisly and surreal cartoon element to the proceedings with characters constantly being killed by sword, fire, hanging, earthquake, drowning, and whatever, who then come back to life when you least expect it, looking much the worse for wear.

Candide may be on a journey of discovery, but he is just not able to understand anything he discovers. In the school of life he is certainly bottom of the class, and seemingly aspires to stay there. Pangloss has taught him that however things appear, life is arranged so that, 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' - which sounds to me like a parody of a famous scripture from the New Testament letter to the Romans. This absurdist Positive Mental Attitude is then slowly and relentlessly beaten out of the hapless Candide, who learns some of the practical lessons of life while never actually being in danger of learning anything about its meaning and purpose. All in all, anyone who believes in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the empirical philosophy of the good and sensible British school, or any Eastern religion in general, will find their ideas roundly lampooned, insulted, and mocked herein.

Candide starts life in Germany, rattles around Europe, travels to South America and finds El Dorado, gains and looses a vast fortune, returns to Europe, visits Turkey and Persia, and is thrashed by three philosophers in Denmark. The narrative obiter dicta may state that 'In life everything grows wearisome', but the Candide view is: 'Everything is not so good as in El Dorado; but everything is not too bad'. An exhaustingly banal conclusion.

It is difficult to see what positive views are contained in this book. Everyone is denigrated. Nothing is sacred and therefore nothing really matters. Everything finishes downbeat, so this is a dangerous work to read with a too-open mind. In fact, the whole book reeks of what sociologists self-congratulatingly call the 'debunking motif', which explains the tenor of the whole. Voltaire was famed abroad and prolific in his lifetime, but time has proved that trenchantly 'being against things', however right you may be, does not bring a lasting fame worth having. 'Candide' is but a small sliver of Voltaire's life output, and his situation reminds me of the works of the ancient Greek Archilochus, who, a century after Homer and Hesiod was dubbed the first 'poet of blame'. But unlike the classics of Homer and Hesiod, only slivers of Archilochus' works remain to this day, whilst his waspish reputation has survived quite well.

Having enjoyed Leonard Bernstein's Candide for a long time and just read my way through the Candide inspired Sotweed Factor, it was time to get through to the source.

Upon completing the original French version, it is no wonder that this book is such an inspiring perennial classic. I very much object to the notion that this book is an anti-everything nihilist manifesto. Some words of explanation.

During the age enlightment mankind made big strides in some areas of science. The development of differential calculus by Newton and Leibniz suddenly allowed mankind a better understanding of the way "God ran the Universe". Based on these supposedly universal laws, Leibniz took the stance that our world could not be anything else than the one and only perfect solution that a divine power had found to the self-imposed problem of creation. The best of all possible worlds.

Against this backdrop Voltaire wrote his satiric redux of Homer meeting Cervantes to discuss the book of Job. In a style that (in the original French) is light and whimsical Voltaire debunks the notion that life takes place in an ordered universe. He certainly is not against everything, but rightfully speaks out against idiotic notions on the virtue of war and cruel religious blindness.

Voltaire has left us with a very light, funny and user-friendly fairytale, that may not be quite up there with the great Homer and especially Cervantes, but deserves a place on every bookshelf.

No the story doesn't change from edition to edition, but the supplementary material provided does change. Candide isn't just some hectic adventure story. It really fails as literature in this regard, and certainly Voltaire's purpose was not to make you chuckle while you whiled away a few empty hours. He would weep to think that you missed out on what he was really trying to tell you. Rest easy. I am not going to launch into a stuffy monologue on Leibnitz and 18th century French Catholicism, but in essence you should know that this is the essence of the story. The philosopher Leibnitz (who with Isaac Newton independently invented Calculus) explained the existence of evil in the world thusly: God, in his infinite wisdom, thought of all possible worlds that he could create, and he chose this one; therefore this must be the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire was also continually chastising the Catholic Church for it's lack of tolerance of other beliefs, and for its aristocratic pomp.

Enter now the Norton Critical Edition of Candide. This book presents the 75 page story along with 130 additional pages of various articles and essays on the times in which it was written; commentary by Voltaire and by his contemporaries; and critiques of the story by modern writers. Sure there are always a few dull, academic essays making their mandatory appearance in a book like this, but my suggestion is just to skip them. After all there are a lot of them to choose from.

Learn the story behind the story so to speak. After all it is the background of Candide that makes Candide the forceful satire that it is.

No book should fall apart within a week. None of them. Period.

Just when I was convinced that all my fellow goths were sticks-in-the-mud, along comes Voltaire to liven things up. This comic book features an extra-terrestrial named Heironymous Posch (who looks strangely identical to Voltaire), who, throughout human history, has been trying to make friends with Earthlings. Unfortunately, his attempts have been failures, resluting in superstitious beliefs in monsters, and other chaos. Posch spends his free time relaxing in his spacecraft, in Earth's orbit, quite happy with his lazy occupation. Then one day, his bosses decide Earth is going to be destroyed. Their plan being a threat to his laziness, Posch embarks on a mission to save Earth. Along the way, he offends the minions of Hell, resulting in demons as well as aliens chasing him down. Hiding out in the Goth scene, Posch befriends a group of surly teenage Goths, who end up being dragged along on his outrageous escapades. Fun for All!

If you're a fan of Voltaire's music, you NEED to read his comics! They're difficult to track down one by one, so it's great that they've bound them all into one easy-to-read book for you. It gives you insight into the demented, humourous, and oh-so-gothy mind of Voltaire, while at the same time making you laugh your fishnets off! I have four words for you: Boris the Pocket Goth.

First off, this new edition of "Candide" has numerous virtues, not the least of which is the amazing erudition invested in the explanatory footnotes that run the length of Voltaire's text. Wootton puts his (and others') knowledge of this masterpiece to good use, and his clarifications are invaluable, helping both to situate Voltaire's thought in the context of his own life and culture, and to resurrect some of the more historically specific humor that has, sadly, been bled away by the last two and a half centuries. Why is it funny, for example, that Voltaire sends his naive protagonist first to the Bulgars? Wootton tells you.

Second, the wealth of contextual material is great for enlarging the reader's understanding of the intellectual climate that Voltaire is critiquing. The Leibniz summary chosen is a bit opaque (small bits of the "Theodicee" would have worked better towards explaining the basics of Leibniz, or at least Voltaire's merciless version of Leibniz), but the portions of Pope and the excerpts of Voltaire's correspondence are enlightening.

The translation is, by and large, very good. We lose a little humor (which always happens in translation), as when the baron's wife is said, due to her weight, to be "regarded as a person of substance" (2); Voltaire here says that, due to her weight, she "s'attirait par là une très grande considération [attracted great consideration]," a wee comical nod to Newtonian physics that must be seen as the first scientific pun of many to come.

This is minor, but another moment of the translation gives me great pause, and, judging from Wootton's impassioned introductory defense of his decision, it must have given him greater pause. Most translations of "Candide" have reliably rendered the famous final lines as "we must cultivate our garden," or something to that effect. Very few have dared omit the word "garden." Wootton delivers it as "we must work our land," and he defends his choice with a well-reasoned appeal to Voltaire's cultural context and correspondence, and claims further that the great symbolic appeal of the "Garden of Eden" image was largely behind the traditional rendering of the line as "we must cultivate our garden." The problem with his defense is not just that Voltaire's line bluntly (and literally) reads "il faut cultiver notre jardin [we must cultivate our garden]," but that the Garden of Eden resonance of which Wootton is so wary is not imported by the reader but rather quite present in "Candide," and even in Wootton's translation of "Candide." When, on page 3 of this translation, Candide is "driven out of the Garden of Eden," he begins a motion that will eventually cycle him back, older and wiser, to a different garden, one drained of religious specificity but not resonance. By tampering with Voltaire's last line, Wootton's translation robs the narrative of its aggressive insistence on this return.

This is fairly nit-picky stuff, though, and any reader can keep the translation difficulties squarely in mind, since Wootton makes--to his credit--no attempt to conceal them. So what you have, in the end, then, is a largely faithful and superbly readable rendition of a work that does not fail, to this day, to make us think, laugh, and feel ashamed. Unpalatable social insitutions like slavery fall under Voltaire's sharp attack, as does the particular cruelty of which organized religion has shown itself capable. The guileless protagonist is back in vogue (see the tributes to Candide in Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" and Groom's "Forrest Gump"), as candid as ever. For [the price], that's a lot of bang for your buck.

I'm finishing Voltaire's Bastards for the third time and I can honestly say that I have enjoyed the book more, and have gotten more out of it with each reading.

This book is an attack on the rational system of thinking that has produced a world of technocrats and second rate managers, kept the United States in a wartime economy for 50 years and enveloped our government in a cult of secrecy. Saul's attacks- whether they be against the political system, modern culture or our convoluted economy- are dead on. As Jim Hoagland stated in his Washington Post review, "Voltaire's Bastards is a hand grenade disguised as a book."

Though Saul's writing style can be a tad stilted and occasionaly repetitious, this book is very well written- despite comments to the contrary in other reviews. Whatever flaws one chooses to find in Saul's writing style, they certainly don't detract from the overall importance of this major work.

I recommend that anyone who is even remotely concered with the course modern civilization is taking should read this book.

For as long as I can remember, pretty well every serious book that I have read, books from many different areas and often by outstanding scholars, has reached the conclusion that the world is headed for catastrophe because it is fundamentally in error about so many things. And now Saul comes along to make matters even worse by offering a mass of evidence that serves to confirm the truth of what all of those other writers were saying.

And he's certainly right about the ideology of the supremacy of Reason having assumed the form of a ruthless and intolerant Dictatorship. The signs of this are everywhere in evidence, and only someone very naive could believe otherwise.

One of my favorite writers is Montaigne, and I think that what makes Montaigne so important and valuable, especially to us today, is that he was characterized above all, not merely by reason, which is common enough, but by a REASONABLE, AND NOT EXCESSIVE, USE OF REASON. In other words, he knew that reason had its limits, that it was a tool limited in its applicability and useful only for certain purposes, and he had the good sense to know when we should stop.

There is in Montaigne a sanity, a balance, an affability, and a modesty and tolerance that I've found in no other European thinker, and that reminds one more of the Chinese sage. But instead of fastening on the truly civilized pattern established by Montaigne, Europe instead chose Descartes, Apostle of the Excessive Use of Reason, with the massive and depressing consequences Saul so eloquently describes.

The Cartesian ideology of Reason fueled and continues to fuel the relentless Juggernaut of Reason now underway that threatens to end up crushing everything beneath its wheels. Montaigne would have been appalled. He stood for something more human, as does Saul.

For the past four weeks John Ralston Saul's book "Voltaire's Bastards" has been my almost constant companion. When not actually reading, or re-reading, this brilliant dissection of the myths, cant and hypocrisy which underlie present Western society, the carefully presented and scrupulously researched exposes refuse to leave my mind. In the last paragraph of the penultimate Chapter, Saul calls on writers to concentrate on questioning and clarifying while avoiding the specialists' obsession with solutions; he continues... "he is true to himself and to the people when his clarity causes disquiet." This seems this Author's intent and "he" has brilliantly succeeded. READ IT.......I DARE YOU!

This book gave an explicit translation of the material

I think that Candide, by Voltaire is a must-read. It mocks the traditonal views of optimism and takes on a almost, humorous approach to telling that story. It also teaches a lesson of contentment and it shows how Candide experienced the contentment of El Dorado and the sybolism of El Dorado to God's kingdom.

Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire wrote "Micromegas" in 1752. Mr. Micromegas is a visitor from Sirius who is four and twenty thousand paces in length from head to foot. Obviously, this tale is in the tradition of Rabelais's famous giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel, but also also Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," which had been written two decades earlier. However, in terms of social satire Voltaire is clearly worker closer to Swift (and the fact Voltaire mentions Swift helps bear this out), especially in presenting the "smallness" of humanity. Voltaire is using science as a tool to ridicule the church and other human institutions, just as he used pretty much everything towards that end.

"Micromegas," in which the stranger from Sirius pays a visitor on the beings of Saturn, is one of the earliest examples of what we would now call science fiction (or speculative fiction to use Harlan Ellison's preferred choice), along with Swift and Cyrano de Bergerac's "Other Worlds" from a century earlier. The adventures around the solar system are simply excuses for Voltaire to create conversations amongst these beings that allow the writer to hold forth of various philosophical questions and political concerns. In other words, Voltaire is dressing up his rhetoric as both narrative and conversation. So, on one level your ability to appreciate this book will depend on how well you know your Locke. However, I prefer to consider it as an early example of science fiction and of some historical interest to students of that genre.

Given the strong identification of this genre with imagining the future, the end of Voltaire's novel offers some interesting symbolism: Micromegas leaves behind a book in which he will write down the purpose of existence, but the pages of the book are blank. Some have argued that Voltaire is being pessimistic and that the book is clearly an attack on science that concludes the ability of science to reduce everything to rationality proves there is no purpose to existence. However, from a more optimistic perspective, the blank pages could suggest humanity must supply its own purpose, which would certainly be in keeping with the main points of Voltaire's philosophy.

Voltaire satirizes the limited scope of human imagination. What is great to us may be relatively small to a cosmos. He has us conceive alien beings many hundred times our size, travelling vast distances by equally 'impossible' feats, and doing things we can hardly dwell on. It may sound funny, but there may be absurdities in the universe. Assuredly there are strange races looking down, and us looking up. The novelist Graham Greene played Russian roulette and lived: in so doing, he felt, suddenly, that "life has infinite possibilities." Voltaire, always the trouble-maker, appeals to the "infinite possibilities." I would liken this tale to Jonathon Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" but with less passion.

A bunch of tired old goth jokes and cliches thrown together with some average looking artwork. In other words, this (is bad)!

I have followed Voltaire's work for several years, and this compilation of his comics is absolutely wonderful. Dark and cynical, he can puncture all the goofy and ridiculous aspects to the gothic subculture. Just a warning to others, if you can not laugh at yourself and those around you, turn away now. However, if your humor is sick and twisted, order this right now! You will not regret it.

I laughed so hard I was crying. Voltaire puts down anyone and everything: Marilyn Manson, Bjork and even himself! It comes with a warning: "Caution: Do Not Read This Book In Public, You Will Laugh Out Loud!" and it is so true. I would recommend this book to anyone. This isn't an expensive book, and it's worth the amount it's priced at.