Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau burst unexpectedly onto the eighteenth-century literary scene as a provocateur whose works electrified readers. An autodidact who had not written anything of significance by age thirty, Rousseau seemed an unlikely candidate to become one of the most influential thinkers in history. Yet the power of his ideas is felt to this day in our political and social lives.

In a masterly and definitive biography, Leo Damrosch traces the extraordinary life of Roussea...