Artisanal Enlightenment

“A tour de force . . . [an] excellent study.”—Choice

"Bertucci’s book is a must-read for all historians of early modern technology interested in the plurality of artisanal knowledge."—Sven Dupré, Technology & Culture

Selected as the winner of the 2018-2019 Louis Gottschalk Prize, sponsored by American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

A finalist for the Kenshur Prize,  awarded for the best book on any eighteenth century topic relevant to a variety of disciplines, given by the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University- Bloomington.

Artisanal Enlightenment was shortlisted for the Pfizer Award given by the History of Science Society for an outstanding book in a three-year period in history of science 

Artisanal Enlightenment was the second-prize winner of the 2018 Pickstone Prize from  the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS), awarded for the best scholarly book in the history of science and medicine in English. 

Winner of the Outstanding Academic Title for 2018 award sponsored by Choice

"In this absorbing study of learned artisans in earlier eighteenth-century Paris, Paola Bertucci explores fundamental questions about technical innovation and the roles of theory and practice at a key moment in the emergence of the modern industrial state and the ideology of enlightenment."—Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge, co-author of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

“A sophisticated investigation of the meaning and role of the mechanical arts in the French Enlightenment. This important and beautifully written study changes the focus and the direction of eighteenth-century scholarship in intellectual history and the history of science.”—Pamela O. Long, author of Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance
 

“Based on deep and careful archival research, and written in remarkably clear prose, this fascinating book explores the relation of the sciences and the arts, or mind and hand, in eighteenth-century France.”—Mary Terrall, author of Catching Nature in the Act: Réaumur and the Practice of Natural History in the Eighteenth Century

“Artisanal Enlightenment is a must-read for historians of science, technology, and the Enlightenment”—Dena Goodman, author of The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment

“In exploring the evolution of artisanal and scientific milieus during the French Enlightenment, Paola Bertucci reveals a complex, layered world of knowledge production and skills in one of the capital cities of the European Enlightenment.”—Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute