Voltaire

This is a short biography. Its subject, François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778), would not have objected––he was careful to point out that “the surest way of being a bore is to tell everything.” What Wayne Andrews’s Voltaire may lack in laundry lists is made up in wit, learning, and an elegance of style eminently appropriate for an appreciation of a man who was never so ruthless as when eliminating the last trace of dust from his own writing. Indeed, Voltaire was the most successful w...