Under the patronage of two south German nobles, Johann Lorenz Schmidt published an annotated translation of the Bible's opening books in 1735. The story of the controversy the work aroused and of its eventual suppression sheds light on many aspects of the eighteenth century, as well as the nature of censorship in our time.

Lafayette: Prisoner of State is the first book-length study of the five-year captivity of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, by a coalition of Austrian and Prussian forces during the French Revolution, including international efforts to win his release. Paul S. Spalding constructs this original history of Lafayette's imprisonment by drawing in part on extensive manuscript collections in America and Europe, some of which have only recently been made available to researchers.

The "hero of two worlds," Lafayette is widely known as the French marquis who...