Years of reading, thinking, and writing about this dazzling intellect have convinced me that our era can learn a lot from Diderot. Yet doing justice to a man who might write on ancient Chinese and Greek music first thing in the morning, study the mechanics of a cotton mill until noon, help purchase some paintings for Catherine the Great in the afternoon, and then return home and compose a play and a twenty-page letter to his mistress in the evening, is as challenging as it is enchanting.
