Book cover of Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790)

Book description

Winner of the Leo Gershoy Prize from the American Historical Association, 1998, for the best book in Early Modern European History.

Timothy Tackett's Becoming a Revolutionary revisits one of the most controversial moments in history: the beginning of the French Revolution. How did it arise? Why did French men and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Becoming a Revolutionary as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Understanding what turns someone into a revolutionary has always interested me.

Sure, there are ideas floating around and there may be material interests motivating decisions. But what causes someone to go from being a reformer to a revolutionary? Tackett digs into the memoires, diaries, and correspondence of deputies sent to the Estates General in 1789 to illuminate how their perspectives evolved throughout the first years of the French Revolution.

His account captures the pressure of crowds, the fumbling of inexperienced politicians, the fears for family back home, and the un-relenting unpredictability of events in a way that clarifies how people…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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