Hombres buenos

Synopsis of Hombres buenos

At the end of the 18th century, when two members of the Real Academia Española—Don Hermógenes Molina, the librarian, and Admiral Pedro Zárate—were asked by their colleagues to travel to Paris to obtain the forbidden 28-volume Encyclopédie de D'Alembert y Diderot in an almost clandestine way, no one could suspect that the two academics would face such a dangerous succession of events: a journey of uncertainty and fear would take them down paths infested by bandits and uncomfortable inns, from the enlightened Madrid of Carlos III to the Paris of cafés, salons, philosophical discussions, libertine lifestyles, and the political agitation at the eve of the French Revolution. Based on real people and facts, and documented with extreme care, Good Men is poignant and fascinating throughout, as it narrates the heroic adventure of those who, guided by the lights of Reason, tried to change the world with books, when the future was burying away old ideas, and the yearning for liberty was making thrones and established worlds begin to topple.