There is so much to this book that I believe it will require another reading. If you're at all interested in two of my favorite topics -- the Enlightenment philosophy of reason and postmodernism -- then you will absolutely LOVE this book. It is so good and often funny in a very witty, sarcastic manner.

In one timeline, Denis Diderot, the brilliant Enlightenment philosopher/author (the author of the famous Encyclopeda (go find this on the internet; it is a fascinating topic) has been invited and has put off several times an invitation to visit Empress Catherine the Great at her newly-built Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. She meets with him each afternoon; she has decided she wants to be an enlightened ruler, but the more Diderot discusses how an enlightened ruler should rule, she counters with the fact that if she followed his way of thinking, she'd be assassinated. To me the scenes (told along side in parallel fashion to a modern journey to St. Petersburg) set at the time of Catherine the Great were the best -- I couldn't wait until the chapter reading "then."

A second journey to St. Petersburg is taking place, ironically, the Diderot project celebrating the age of reason is taking place in Russia just as the last vestiges of the Old Guard Communists are trying to get Yeltsin out of power, staging their well-publicized coup. It seems that the participants of the Diderot project are going to the Hermitage in search of Diderot's works which were bought and shipped in full to Catherine the Great. However, what really happens on the way to Russia and once in Russia are vastly different.

There is a lot written on this book; I will tell you that I enjoyed it very much but I took a long time to get through it and have copious notes which I will have to go through here shortly. Not for an everyday kind of read, but well worth sticking to it through the 500+ pages. ( )

Sounds like a terrible book but being that Diderot has greatly influenced my life (mostly by providing inspiration for my dog's name), I felt it was a must buy (especially at $3!).