"From Publishers Weekly : This irresistible history of the French Revolution is much more than a colorful mosaic. By splicing a reflective narrative with graphics (engravings, satirical cartoons, photographs) and primary documentsletters, trial transcripts, memoirs, decrees, newspaper editorialsit brings vivid immediacy to tumultuous events without sacrificing objective distance. The main narrative consists of dozens of tableaux, allowing room for such topics as prison conditions, Freemasonry, feudalism, the market for luxury goods. Along with the expected profiles of Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI, Robespierre and Marat, we meet scheming pretender Philippe of Orleans who tried to bring down the king, professional revolutionary Tom Paine imprisoned under the Terror, and unstable leftist Joseph Fouche who led a campaign of de-Christianization and later became Napoleon's police minister. The text is provocative in its discussion of the Jacobins' prototype welfare state and of the Terror as a response to foreign pressures."--via amazon.com (1988 HarperCollins ed.).

Written from widely different perspectives, these essays characterize the Great Revolution as the dawn of the modern age, the grand narrative of modernity. The scope of issues under scrutiny is extremely broad, ranging from the analyses of the hotly debated class character of 1789 and the problem of the nation state to the “Cult of the Supreme Being,” the emancipation of the Jews, and the cultural heritage of the Revolution. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

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The Coming of the French Revolution remains essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of this great turning point in the formation of the modern world. First published in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, and suppressed by the Vichy government, this classic work explains what happened in France in 1789, the first year of the French Revolution. Georges Lefebvre wrote history "from below"—a Marxist approach. Here, he places the peasantry at the center of his analysis, emphasizing the class struggles in France and the significant role they played in the coming of the revolution. Eloquently translated by the historian R. R. Palmer and featuring an introduction by Timothy Tackett that provides a concise intellectual biography of Lefebvre and a critical appraisal of the book, this Princeton Classics edition continues to offer fresh insights into democracy, dictatorship, and insurrection.