Books like The Gods Are Athirst — picked by fans

This book tells a strong story about censorship and has perhaps a "light" dystopian feel.

I liked this book because Bradbury’s characters are well drawn and, like Orwell, he creates a strong story. It reminded me of past events in the 30’s. A fireman, following orders to confiscate and destroy books because the authority does not want people to develop constructive thinking. Gradually turning against his boss, the fireman kills his boss and joins a group of people who memorise books and store content for the future.

I found this a thought-provoking story and hope that, considering the censorship laws we have today at home and in countries like Russia and Iran, this is one story that does not come true.

I used this book to relieve the boredom of a long daily commute.

Instead of looking out of a train window at the same old scenery I'd passed a thousand times before, I was now taken to a dystopian society in which everything which I had taken for granted about family life was turned upside down. Where humans are manufactured to a specification instead of being born. A new pseudo religion where everyone makes the sign of the ‘T’, to signify their devotion to the original Ford Model T, which was the first vehicle to be manufactured on an assembly line.

I was very young when I first read this book. Many years later I took it back from the shelf and went through its pages with older eyes.

The reality portrayed by Émile Zola in the 19th Century is quite brutal. The coal miners back then – with their struggle for life, excess work, permanent fatigue, lack of knowledge and understanding, contrasted by the careful calculations and comfort of their masters – mirror miners and other workers today.

Greed on one side, poverty on the other regarded as normal. The very few with enough wit to overthrow the injustice were silenced, as it happens today at the productive facilities of the capital.

Social unrest? No wonder.

This book is an unfinished work, hard to follow, because it is a draft never reviewed by the author and published posthumously.

However, it is a must-read, so please do not be discouraged as I was, for the ideas that it encloses picture a more equalized society practically based on the changing of our economic road, nothing else than ending capitalism as we know it.

Two subjects are of particular interest: first, how to correctly retribute people for the wealth they generate through their work; and second, a demonstration of how excess production and money amassing do not amount to wealth. An interesting lesson in economics.

Blanc discovered in the National Archives in Paris a remarkable cache of letters kept in an old tin labelled as the property of Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor of the French revolutionary Tribunal. He was a man who in sending off the last batch of victims to be beheaded, even after hearing that Robespierre was dead and with him, the Terror, said ‘justice must run its course’

The letters, written by prisoners on the eve of their own execution, to wife, family, plangent pleas to be remembered – some containing a little keepsake: a shirt stud, maybe – were never delivered, but, on Fouquier’s order, impounded as possible evidence. Post mortem? What was the point? The letters are heart-rending, sad, pathetic, drained of hope, but as poignant a souvenir of the effect of the vicious law which was sending their authors to the scaffold as any you will read. Fouquier, whose… show more.

A total feeling for the pulse of the Revolution, and a focus on its core in that fatal year – the end of the Monarchy, the ushering-in of the Reign of terror. Its reverberations spread everywhere. It gave me such a strong sense of the decadence of the ancien régime, and the fury of the populace that aroused.  

A fun twist on one of my favorite historical tales, The Scarlet Pimpernel, this novel portrays the elusive hero as a brilliant, determined woman. The cast of characters is full and well-developed, including a dashing hero worthy of our heroine’s love. This story is beautifully written, has plenty of twists and turns, heart-melting romance, and a delightful happily ever after. 

The great strength of this book is that as well as offering a major reinterpretation of Louis, XVI, it is also a pleasure to read. John Hardman has pioneered the reappraisal of Louis that has been underway over the last twenty years. The unfortunate king has traditionally been portrayed as either reactionary or incompetent (or both). In place of this caricature, Hardman convincingly presents the monarch as a man of high intelligence who was prepared to make many more compromises with the Revolution than historians have allowed. In his view, Louis’ real weakness was not intellectual but psychological: crises of depression that paralysed him at crucial moments after 1789.

This book blew me away when I read it in graduate school. 

The depth of archival mastery is simply stunning, but what stands out about Cobb’s magnum opus is how he brought the intervention of the average militant, the men who made the Revolution work, to life. 

He shows why and how people lived the Terror. Cobb also illustrates the Terror in the provinces, noting the unique elements of each place and region but also showing the commonalities of structure and practice. 

Like many who read Cobb, I dreamed of writing something so poignant, so powerful, and so lasting. 

Nobody has the time and financial support to do this kind of work anymore; it is a monument that helps everybody else illuminate different aspects of politics in 1793-94.

Lucas’ evocation of the mission of deputy Claude Javogues in the department of the Loire made me want to study the French Revolution. 

It is intricate, complicated, and messy, as might be expected of politics amidst the stresses of war, revolution, and terror. 

Lucas situates the motives and methods of a representative of the French central state in the context of local politics, specifically the politics of the Jacobin Clubs and revolutionary militants, who often had different needs and priorities. 

Their frequent conflict and occasional collaboration as well as their difficulties in getting the rest of the population to support the war effort and Revolutionary government make for gripping, though not always easy, reading.