Voltaire was the first modern human: furious, funny, skeptical, and allergic to stupidity. This book is an irreverent, sharp, and accessible journey through his life, ideas, and works — from the glittering salons of Enlightenment Paris to the muddy roads of Candide’s disasters. It follows him through imprisonment and exile, across Europe’s philosophical feuds, and into the making of a mind that mocked kings, exposed priests, and still had time to invent a new form of moral sanity. Here, philosophy is explained in plain English — no powdered wigs required. You’ll find out why “Écrasez l’infâme!” (“Crush the infamous thing!”) became the battle cry of reason, how Voltaire turned doubt into an art, and how Candide remains the greatest satire on optimism ever written. But this is not a museum tour of the Enlightenment — it’s a conversation across centuries. It looks at Voltaire’s influence on revolutions, reformers, writers, and even memes; at how his ideas shaped modern secularism, human rights, and freedom of speech; and at how fanaticism keeps finding new ways to resurrect itself — often online. With equal parts history, philosophy, and irony, Voltaire in Plain English shows that skepticism can be humane, laughter can be moral, and sanity might just begin with a good insult. For readers who prefer wit to worship, reason to reverence, and a good argument to a perfect answer — this is Voltaire, unpowdered, unfiltered, and still laughing.
