The Measure of the World

First edition in English. 8vo. Pp. xi, 299. Quarter-bound cream linen, over teal green paper-covered boards, stamped in gilt to spine; like endpapers. Author's Preface, Appendices.

Translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer. Originally published as Le Mesure du monde, by Éditions Seghers, in 1987.

Winner of the 1989 Prix d'Institut. Novel about the devising of the metric system, initiated by the French Academy in 1792 but not completed until the turn of the century due to the French Revolution. By the author of Numbers: The Universal Language (1996), and the novel The Parrot's Theorem (1998). "[A] tale of adventure, drama, comedy and danger [amidst] the turbulence and terror of the French Revolution.... Arthur Goldhammer's translation from the French is miraculous." –Roy Herbert, New Scientist