Polemicist, Pornographer, Philosopher, Prisoner, And All-Around Good Egg: Denis Diderot (And Yeah, He Wrote The First Encyclopedia)

“He was and remains … a mensch. He is also a very French mensch. He is a touchingly perfect representative — far more than the prickly Voltaire — of a certain French intellectual kind not entirely vanished.” Adam Gopnik explains. – The New Yorker