French Revolution Book

3 1/2

This was really an excellent just a decent overview (slightly over a hundred pages) of the Revolution.

The six chapters are Echoes; Why It Happened; How It Happened; What It Ended; What It Started; and Where It Stands.

The last chapter is an interesting (perhaps a little biased) review of the celebration of the bicentennial of the Revolution in 1989, and a summary of the schools of interpretation which have held sway in the last fifty years (the Classic interpretation, Revisionism, and Post-revisionism).

The index is serviceable, there is a nice timeline [actually the timeline is more useful than that rest of the book], a little end section on the Calendar which the Revolution produced (lots of details there), and, best of all, a great section of suggestions for further reading, with several dozen books fit into six categories. Some of the books are classic works fifty and more years old, but probably most of them have appeared in the period 1960-2000, and offer a selection of the top volumes written in that period. Can't praise this book highly enough.

Well ... I have changed my view. The problem with the book is that if you're interested in a narrative of what happened in the revolution, when and how it happened, and who the main actors were ... the book is practically worthless. The way it's organized, even with help from the index, just doesn't answer those kind of questions. Yes, it does answer the questions as set forth in the chapter titles, which may be what you're looking for.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Consciousness VSI
Random review: Jerry Dantzic: Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill
Next review: The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson

Previous library review: The Waning of the Middle Ages procrastination evidence
Next library review: The French Revolution Carlyle