Books, Libraries, and Democracy: Gilles Pécout and Robert Darnton

What role do books and reading play in democratic life—and how is that role changing today? Join Gilles Pécout (historian and president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, France’s national library) and historian Robert Darnton (university librarian emeritus at Harvard University and author of The Great Cat Massacre and The Revolutionary Temper) for a conversation tracing the relationship between reading, public opinion, and democracy from the Enlightenment to the present. Moderated by critic and translator Liesl Schillinger, the discussion will explore how changing reading practices contributed to new forms of public life in eighteenth-century France and the United States; what today’s transformations in reading and attention might mean for democratic culture; French and American perspectives on freedom of expression and book bans; and the evolving role of libraries not simply as repositories of books, but as vital civic and social spaces for gathering, exchange, and access to knowledge.

Presented in English. 

Admission is free and available on a first-come, first-served basis, as space is limited. RSVP is required but does not guarantee entry. 

Gilles Pécout

Gilles Pécout has served as president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the national library of France, since April 2024. The BnF’s mission is to collect, preserve, enrich, and make available the national documentary heritage. A historian specializing in nineteenth-century Italy and the Mediterranean world, Pécout has taught at the École normale supérieure and the École pratique des hautes études. He previously served as rector of the academies of Nancy-Metz and Paris and, from 2020 to 2024, as France’s ambassador to Austria.

Robert Darnton 

Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer university professor, emeritus, and university librarian, emeritus, at Harvard University and one of the world’s leading historians of eighteenth-century France and the history of books. He taught at Princeton University from 1968 to 2007 before joining Harvard, where he served as director of the Harvard Library. He is the author of numerous books, including The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789, and, most recently, The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France. His many honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal. He was named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France.

Liesl Schillinger (Moderator) 

Liesl Schillinger is a critic, writer, and translator who teaches journalism and criticism at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School. She worked at The New Yorker for more than a decade and became a regular critic for The New York Times Book Review in 2004. Her translations include works by Alexandre Dumas, Nataša Dragnic, Jean Echenoz, and Inès Cagnati. Her most recent translation, Cagnati’s Crazy Genie, was published by NYRB Classics in 2026. She is also the author of Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century. 

Register for the event here.

Learn about other Literary Fall events here.

Read a conversation with Robert Darnton in Villa Albertine’s annual magazine, STATES, on the intertwined histories of the French and American revolutions.