The Kiss of Lamourette

At home in the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries Robert Darnton is a shrewd and entertaining guide to the shifting borderlands of history and culture. These wide-ranging essays appear under various headings: “Current Events” —this section includes the wonderful story of the moment in 1792 when all the delegates in the French Legislative Assembly kissed each other; “Media” on television pounding a newspaper beat and tips to academics on how to get a book published; “The Printed Word” with an essay on the history of books; “The Lay of the Land” on aspects of intellectual history; and “Good Neighbors” on the relation of history to literature anthropology and the sociology of knowledge.