. Voltaire

It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this 'optimism' concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the 'all for the best' approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters - such as the recent earthquakes in Lima and Lisbon - not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging...

An Englishman's two voyages carry him to Lilliput, a land of people six inches high, and Brobdingnag, a land of giants. Includes a brief biography of the author and a discussion of Gulliver's Travels as a satire.