Here are 100 books that The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution fans have personally recommended if you like
The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution.
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I am an academic economist, but economics is not only about interest rates and public funding of healthcare. It asks basic questions about individual choices and how they impact economic and political institutions. By taking an empirical perspective on historical episodes of revolts and revolutions, economic analysis can inform us about what enables the establishment and consolidation of democracy. This is obviously of utmost importance at a time when populist politicians on both sides of the political spectrum use rhetoric that may ultimately trigger democratic backsliding.
This is a classic book dealing with the Terror during the 1789 French Revolution.
I like the way it shows how the French revolutionaries quickly resorted to violence. They talked about democracy, equality, and liberty but were quick to deny them to their “enemies,” chief among them other revolutionaries who were too “moderate” or too “extreme.”
In so doing, I like how the book shows how the French revolutionaries established a regime with what a modern observer would recognize as features of a totalitarian dictatorship.
The Reign of Terror continues to fascinate scholars as one of the bloodiest periods in French history, when the Committee of Public Safety strove to defend the first Republic from its many enemies, creating a climate of fear and suspicion in revolutionary France. R. R. Palmer's fascinating narrative follows the Committee's deputies individually and collectively, recounting and assessing their tumultuous struggles in Paris and their repressive missions in the provinces. A foreword by Isser Woloch explains why this book remains an enduring classic in French revolutionary studies.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am an academic economist, but economics is not only about interest rates and public funding of healthcare. It asks basic questions about individual choices and how they impact economic and political institutions. By taking an empirical perspective on historical episodes of revolts and revolutions, economic analysis can inform us about what enables the establishment and consolidation of democracy. This is obviously of utmost importance at a time when populist politicians on both sides of the political spectrum use rhetoric that may ultimately trigger democratic backsliding.
Acemoglu and Robinson's book is (one of) the best theoretical monograph(s) in political economy.
I like how the book starts from a simple framework and then develops a series of models that emphasize how conflict and the potential for violent confrontation are essential factors for democratization.
Moreover, those models are always presented in perspective with an historical narrative that emphasizes why democracy is able to persist or not.
I am an academic economist, but economics is not only about interest rates and public funding of healthcare. It asks basic questions about individual choices and how they impact economic and political institutions. By taking an empirical perspective on historical episodes of revolts and revolutions, economic analysis can inform us about what enables the establishment and consolidation of democracy. This is obviously of utmost importance at a time when populist politicians on both sides of the political spectrum use rhetoric that may ultimately trigger democratic backsliding.
I like how Tilly's book emphasizes how democracy was often the outcome of popular protest.
Its analysis is careful enough to note that such protest could be peaceful or violent, as well as spontaneous or planned. As such, this book does not provide sweeping generalizations for the development of democratic institutions, and sometimes for their demise.
And its last chapter provides food for thought regarding democratization outside of Europe.
Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000, first published in 2004, is an analysis of the relationship between democratization and contentious politics that builds upon the model set forth in the pathbreaking book, Dynamics of Contention. Using a sustained comparison of French and British histories since 1650 or so as a springboard for more general comparison within Europe Contention and Democracy goes on to demonstrate that democratization occurred as result of struggles during which (as in 19th century Britain and France) few, if any, of the participants were self-consciously trying to create democratic institutions. Consequently, circumstances for democratization vary from era…
I am an academic economist, but economics is not only about interest rates and public funding of healthcare. It asks basic questions about individual choices and how they impact economic and political institutions. By taking an empirical perspective on historical episodes of revolts and revolutions, economic analysis can inform us about what enables the establishment and consolidation of democracy. This is obviously of utmost importance at a time when populist politicians on both sides of the political spectrum use rhetoric that may ultimately trigger democratic backsliding.
I like how this book brings 17th-century England alive.
It emphasizes how different England was from the country which we know today, notably by showing how religious outlooks shaped all aspects of life, from holiday celebrations to politics. At the same time, it also dwells on the economic and political factors which triggered the English Civil War in the 1640s.
Indeed, by ending its narrative with the 1688 Glorious Revolution and William of Orange's coming to power, it also provides the background for England’s international dominance in the 18th century.
A WATERSTONES, TELEGRAPH, ECONOMIST AND NEW YORKER BOOK OF THE YEAR A major new history of England's turbulent seventeenth century and how it marked the birth of a new world
'This is a wonderful book, exhaustively researched, vigorously argued and teeming with the furious joy of seventeenth-century life' The Times
'A brilliant, bloody account of England's most dramatic century . . . Thrilling' Telegraph
The seventeenth century began as the English suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, the country suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under…
I began my career as a foreign correspondent in Cold War Eastern Europe, under communist domination. I lived in Greece, a Cold War battleground, in the 1980s, from where I made regular forays into the Balkans and Central Europe. Those journeys left a vivid, lifelong impression on me.
This is a thick history of the Cold War that breaks new ground in that it shifts the emphasis from Europe, where the Cold War started and ended, to the Third World where it was actually fought in a bloody manner through a series of proxy wars, large and small.
'Odd Arne Westad's daring ambition, supra-nationalist intellect, polyglot sources, masterly scholarship and trenchant analysis make The Cold War a book ofresounding importance for appraising our global future as well as understanding our past' Richard Davenport-Hines, TLS, Books of the Year
As Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945 there was a tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of the conflict. Instead, the combination of the huge power of the USA and USSR and the near-total collapse of most of their rivals created a unique, grim new environment: the…
My childhood was marred by change and a search for meaning. Born in the UK to an English mother and Iraqi father, moving to Iraq as a toddler and then back to the UK as a 14-year-old, I was exposed to the dramatic differences in the unwritten rules of how we are meant to behave and experience the world. It was probably inevitable that after training as a doctor, I would eventually end up as a child and adolescent psychiatrist grappling with big questions about life and its struggles. These are the books that opened my mind to re-imagining these dilemmas. I hope they help to open yours, too.
He was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, political activist, philosopher, and a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front involved in the fight against French colonialism. He sadly died following a short illness when he was just 36 years old. He wrote two seminal books that had a profound effect on my understanding of the psychological impact of discrimination and colonisation on both the coloniser and the colonised.
I found his writing to have a visceral quality, and having come from a colonised country (Iraq) to live in the coloniser country (Britain), I could "feel" in my body and mind the psychodramas he was describing.
First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
During my career as an author, I have written on everything from U.S. Presidents to natural disasters. My true passion, however, is military history, a subject I have followed closely since childhood. Why? I have no idea. Nevertheless, I have read widely on the subject and, with the publication of Outnumbered, fulfilled a longstanding dream. The early modern period of European history, during which the continent’s culture left behind the Middle Ages and laid the foundations of the world we live in today, was an era rife with military change and innovation, as well as endemic conflict and the emergence of powerful, centralized nation-states, all of which I find enthralling. These books bring this time and place to life.
In the year 1500 European civilization was fractured, deficient in natural resources, and unremarkable in its military technology. By 1800 it had gained control over one-third of the globe. How? This seminal work by Geoffrey Parker tackles that question with a sweeping assessment of global developments during the period, revealing the suite of innovations that allowed the West to expand so dramatically. Sparking a debate that continues to this day, it is a must-read on the subject of early modern technology, imperialism, and warfare.
This is a new edition of Geoffrey Parker's much-admired illustrated account of how the West, so small and so deficient in natural resources in 1500, had by 1800 come to control over one-third of the world. Parker argues that the rapid development of military practice in the West constituted a 'military revolution' which gave Westerners an insurmountable advantage over the peoples of other continents. This edition incorporates new material, including a substantial 'Afterword' which summarises the debate which developed after the book's first publication.
In spite of many setbacks, living standards have trended upwards over the last 10,000 years. One of my main interests as an economist has been to understand the sources of this trend and its broad effects. The key driving force is new technologies. We are better off than our Victorian ancestors, not because we have more of what they had but because we have new things, such as airplanes and indoor plumbing. However, these new technologies have also brought some unfortunate side effects. We need to understand that dealing with these successfully depends, not on returning to the use of previous technologies, but on developing newer technologies such as wind and solar power.
Using the modern view of science, many economic historians have sought to diminish the effects of science on the technologies in the 18th and 19th centuries. This wonderful book by a sociologist documents how science, as it was then practiced, pervaded the whole structure of British society, from preachers teaching that Newton had revealed the architecture that God had imposed during creation, to a journal teaching Newtonian science to women. As Jacob puts it: “The role of science…was not that of general laws leading to the development of specific applications. Instead it…[provided] the theoretical mechanics and the practical mathematics that facilitated technological change. Brought together by a shared technical vocabulary of Newtonian origin, engineers and entrepreneurs…negotiated…the mechanization of workshops or the improvement of canals, mines, and harbours.
This book seeks to explain the historical process by which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries scientific knowledge became an integral part of the culture of Europe and how this in turn led to the Industrial Revolution. Comparative in structure, Jacob explains why England was so much more successful at this transition than its continental counterparts.
I’m an award-winning biographer and critic. My essays and reviews appear regularly in the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, and I teach literature and creative writing at King’s College London. I’ve always loved stories about the lives of great writers – stories that seek to illuminate genius, without ever explaining it away.
This is one of the great literary biographies: impeccably researched, stylishly narrated, refreshingly indifferent to academic convention, and authentically Dickensian in its pungency of atmosphere and solidity of characterisation.
Dickens was a landmark biography when first published in 1990. This specially edited shorter edition takes the reader into the life of one of the world's greatest writers.
Here, Ackroyd attempts to peel away the mask of a man whose life was outwardly a picture of Victorian rectitude, but whose love life was as complicated (and unconventional) as any modern writer's. Dickens had everything - fame, success and riches - but he died harbouring a deep sadness he had experienced all his life. He was a man of mercurial character, had enormous vitality and humour, but he also had a…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I read a lot of literary fiction. At the moment, I’m finishing To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara, which I’ve enjoyed and whose novel, A Little Life,was brilliant. My interest in thriller fiction is sparked by writers who bring their considerable literary talents to their trade. John LeCarré comes to mind. Writers who sacrifice depth of character or concern for place quickly lose my interest. Thankfully, there are many thriller writers who do a superb job of keeping my wandering nature in check. (A quick note: I also write dystopian fiction under my pen name James Jaros.)
The Rape of the Rose is an unforgettable novel that details the horrors of the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century Britain. Hughes, also a poet of note, portrays the enslavement of children in those “dark Satanic mills” with disturbing precision, offering his youngest characters shreds of dignity, which life has deprived them of so roundly. He also shows men and women maimed and worked to death by owners intent on extracting every last ounce of their labor. A major figure in the novel is a father who flees a mill and joins the Luddite Revolution. I read this book thirty-five years ago and remember it vividly. It presents the underbelly of the Industrial Revolution—and the ample reasons for the rebellions it triggered.
Set in 1812, this novel concerns Mor Greave, a self-educated man, who is caught up in an English revolution in the North. He is hunted by the authorities and becomes drawn into a underworld of duplicity, passion and sexual licence he never imagined.
