The first section of this volume consists of a panel, Transnational Quixotes and Quixotisms, introduced by Catherine Jaffe. It includes essays by Amelia Dale on how female quixotes differed from male quixotes in eighteenth-century England; by Elena Deanda on the Marquis de Sade as a quixotic figure; by Elizabeth Franklin Lewis on English travelers' uses of Spanish cartography; and by Aaron R. Hanlon on quixotism as a global heuristic, with reference to the Pacific as well as the Atlantic.

The second panel in the volume, The Habsburgs and the Enlightenment, is introduced by Rebecca Messbarger. It includes essays by Rita Krueger on conflicts between Maria Theresa's view of the Enlightenment and that of her reigning children; by Julia Doe on Marie Antoinette's promotion of a new nontraditional kind of opera at the French court; by R. S. Agin on questions of judicial torture in Austrian Lombardy; and by Heather Morrison on Habsburg efforts to compete with other empires in botany as well as diplomacy.

The third section consists of individual essays: Michael B. Guenter on Britain's subordination of science to imperial goals in the new world; Richard Frohock on the critique of British imperialism in John Gay's Polly; Jeffrey Merrick on the French Revolution's failure to materially alter the legal status of sodomy and suicide; Adam Potkay, comparing Rousseau and Adam Smith's views of pity and gratitude; Jeff Loveland, on the methods used by Diderot to edit the Encyclop die; and Tamar Mayer, on Jacques-Louis David's use of mirror reversibility in the composition of his painting, Oath of the Horatii.