What role do books and reading play in democratic life—and how is that role changing today? Join Gilles Pécout (historian and president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, France’s national library) and Robert Darnton (historian and university librarian emeritus at Harvard University and author of The Great Cat Massacre and The Revolutionary Temper) for a conversation tracing the relationship between reading, public opinion, and democracy from the Enlightenment to the present. Moderated by critic and translator Liesl Schillinger, the discussion will explore how changing reading practices contributed to new forms of public life in eighteenth-century France and the United States; what today’s transformations in reading and attention might mean for democratic culture; French and American perspectives on freedom of expression and book bans; and the evolving role of libraries not simply as repositories of books, but as vital civic and social spaces for gathering, exchange, and access to knowledge.

Books, Libraries, and Democracy: Gilles Pécout and Robert Darnton