The Story of John Mills and the French Encyclopedia

John Mills translated an English encyclopedia into French, which then planted the seeds for a new kind of knowledge to flourish and spread. That French encyclopedia ended up selling more than 4,000 copies of its multi-volume set - making it perhaps the best-selling book of the century. But Diderot got in trouble because he wrote articles about being an atheist,. Because the encyclopedia itself was filled with an argument about the world based on reason instead of church authority.