When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. In this dazzling history, Robert Darnton draws on decades of study to conjure a past as vivid as today's news. He explores eighteenth-century Paris as an information society like our own, its news circuits centered in cafés, park benches, and under the Palais-Royal's Tree of Cracow. Through pamphlets, gossip, and public performances, the events of some forty years - from disastrous treaties and royal debauchery to thrilling hot-air balloon ascents - entered the churning collective consciousness of ordinary Parisians. With public trust eroding as new aspirations soared, Parisians prepared themselves for revolution.