Book #437 – Candide by Voltaire

Have you ever wanted to ridicule someone else’s statement so badly you wrote a several thousand word satire about why their viewpoint is wrong? No? Well, neither have I, but apparently, the French has nothing better to do in the 1750s. I missed out on this book (and a couple others on this list) by not taking any philosophy classes in college. Did I miss out? Probably, but engineering didn’t rely much on the social sciences. Still, I think it would have been beneficial to have a guide for this fast paced satirical and philosophical work.

Originally published in 1759, Candide was written by Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire). Upon release, the book was actually banned in several places because of the rather sharp jabs that Voltaire made while masking everything in the main character’s naive personality. Since then, the book has become wildly popular and is likely one of the most taught novels ever originating from France. It’s been made into film, television series, and numerous plays. The philosophy in the book also generated plenty of derivative novels from those that agreed with Voltaire.