Word: encyclope
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...just four years after the first volume of Denis Diderot's Encyclopedic, that great compendium of information and Enlightenment opinion, had appeared in Paris. The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica began appearing in Edinburgh in 1768. The colonists knew and valued these works; indeed, I'Encyclopédie was among the most popular of all the books imported for colonial libraries. Information was instrumental to human happiness; education was meant to serve progress and political stability; and news, after all, was only one category of information, subject to the same laws of controversy and debate. The major...
...send obscene letters to relatives; in 18th century London, privies were called Jerichos; Boswell went to bed with Rousseau's wife precisely 13 times. The Durants can scarcely resist an anecdote or an aphorism. The borrowed ones are usually the best, as for instance Diderot's Encyclopédie distinction between the words bind and attach: "One is bound to one's wife, attached to one's mistress." But the authors also do reasonably well on their own, as when they say of Louis XV that he "lacked the art of dying in due time...
...come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths, repudiated by society and civilization, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopédi and the Age of Reason, driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity, and seeing, in his last months, the apotheosis of his greatest enemy-how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated...
Sharps & Flats. Like the Encyclopædia Britanica, Muzak is another of the profitable enterprises of shrewd ex-Manhattan Ad Man William B. (Benton & Bowles) Benton, 50, now Democratic Senator from Connecticut. He bought the seven-year-old Muzak company in 1941, after a succession of owners had lost millions trying to make a go of it. To run Muzak, Benton hired handsome, go-getting Harry E. Houghton, another ex-adman, and he turned the trick by convincing industrialists that music improves workers' morale and efficiency. Houghton quadrupled the number of Muzak's customers, brought it from...
...pages in the new Sears, Roebuck catalogue, only four advertise books. But Sears, Roebuck is a big factor in one branch of the book business. Since 1920 it has owned a controlling interest in the Encyclopædia Britannica (total sales-1,000,000 sets). First published in Scotland in 1768, the Britannica came under U. S. ownership 35 years ago, barely squeezed through its 12th, 13th and 14th editions, was often rescued by the late Julius Rosenwald when he headed Sears, Roebuck. For its 14th edition, it needed $2,500,000 to keep going. This month veteran Editor Franklin...