The best-selling books in France during the waning decades of the ancien regime were not the outlawed works of great philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau, but other books, also banned by the government, written and sold "under the cloak." These formed a libertine literature that was a crucial part of the culture of dissent in the ancien regime. Robert Darnton explores the cultural and political significance of these "bad" books and introduces readers to three of the most influential illegal best-sellers, from which he includes substantial excerpts.