Passionate Minds takes us to the very heart of the Enlightenment through the story of the affair between the politically daring writer Voltaire and Emilie du Chåtelet, one of the most gifted scientists of the 18th century.

It was 1733--a time when women could be whipped with impunity by their husbands and censorship was rampant--when the great poet Voltaire met Emilie du Chåtelet and fell in love with her fierce intelligence.

Through the prism of this unconventional, decade-long relationship, we see the birth of the Enlightenment--from the first stirrings of equality between the sexes to the earliest commitment to a separation of church and state.

Theirs was a love affair as tumultuous as the era, filled with far more than reading and conversation about Newton's theories. As Bodanis writes, "There were frantic gallopings across France, sword fights in front of besieged German fortresses...Versailles card cheats; torn passion with the man who inspired the heartlessly sexy aristocrat Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses...even an expedition through the frozen wastes of northern Lapland, trying to find the truth about God's plans for the universe."

Passionate Minds will be irresistible to readers of biography, narrative history, Bodanis's bestselling E=mc2, and anyone fascinated by the birth of great ideas.

A native of Chicago, David Bodanis taught a survey of intellectual history at the University of Oxford for many years and is the author of several books, including the bestselling E=mc2. He now lives in London, England.