About the Book: A radical reassessment of the Enlightenment era, arguing that rather than a triumph of reason and progress, the Age of Enlightenment ended in disillusion, commercial excess, colonial expansion and the failure of liberal‐ideals. Whatmore traces how major thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke wrestled with the promises of the era and watched liberty devolve into empire, fanaticism and corruption