A People's History of the French Revolution

Author(s): Eric Hazan

History

The assault on the Bastille, the Reign of Terror, Danton mocking his executioner, Robespierre dispensing a fearful justice, and the archetypal gadfly Marat - the events and figures of the French Revolution have exercised a hold on the historical imagination for more than 200 years. It has been a template for heroic insurrection and, to more conservative minds, a cautionary tale. Looking at history from the bottom up, Hazan presents the revolution as a rational and pure struggle for emancipation. In this new history, the first significant account of the French Revolution in over twenty years, Hazan maintains that it fundamentally changed the Western world - for the better.


Product Information

"Both an evocative narrative of a fascinating period and a passionate argument for the continued relevance of the revolution and its lessons." - Irish Times "A riveting popular history." - Spectator "A People's History of the French Revolution chronicles the 1789 upheaval in all its guillotine gore and popular fury... The combination of bottom-up testimony with quick authorial intelligence lends the history a vivid immediacy." - Ian Thomson, Independent "A vivid, lucid, informative, detailed account of the French Revolution." - Reviews in History "Amid the intellectual murkiness of the European scene, a few bright flames are burning: as witness the work of Eric Hazan." - New Left Review "A luminous book ... resurrecting, day by day, week by week, the essential moments of this singular epoch, where the most unbridled enthusiasm, tragedy, courage, treachery mingle together ... an account capable of dispelling the boredom of previous conflicting accounts. With this book, with its multiple focal points and perspectives, which allow the clamor of the French Revolution to be heard ... a new momentum is found." - Marianne "A story of the Revolution which vividly revives the chain of events, marking the rhythm of its episodes and their brutal accelerations, and the phases of calm which succeeded them." - Sciences Humaines

General Fields

  • : 9781781689844
  • : Verso Books
  • : Verso Books
  • : 0.367
  • : December 2016
  • : 210mm X 140mm X 33mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : February 2017
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 432
  • : Paperback
  • : Eric Hazan