Review by Choice Review
Schama's massive book should not intimidate any serious reader who is interested in gaining a comprehensive view of the era of the French Revolution. Written in a marvelously readable narrative style and based upon the latest research, this authoritative chronicle focuses on the reign of Louis XVI (1774-92) and traces the major developments of the Old Regime as it moved toward revolution in 1789. Indeed, roughly half the book is devoted to the years preceding the storming of the Bastille in July 1789. The remainder covers the course of the Revolution through the overthrow of Robespierre in July 1794. Imaginative, beautifully conceived, laced with some 214 illustrations, and providing an impressive bibliography, this work will likely take its place as one of the most popular scholarly books available on the French Revolution. Viewing the events from above, through the eyes of leading public and private figures, Schama's book will be required reading for scholars and serious students of the period, but will also have broad appeal because of its literary style and the author's remarkable storytelling ability. A truly outstanding work. -G. C. Bond, Auburn University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
A revisionist history that brilliantly analyzes the conflicting impulses that produced the French Revolution and the bloody violence that followed.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Old Regime, far from being moribund on the eve of the French Revolution, bristled with signs of dynamism and energy, writes Schama in this sprawling, provocative, sometimes infuriating chronicle that stands much conventional wisdom on its head. His contention is that the Revolution did not produce a ``patriotic culture of citizenship'' but was preceded by one. The privileged classes, he argues, were open to new blood, and a ``capitalist nobility'' deeply involved in industrial enterprise supported technological innovation. If Schama ( The Embarrassment of Riches ) is correct, the fiscal havoc of Louis XVI's regime did not have revolution as its inevitable outcome, but a cult of violence, endorsed by romanticism, became the engine of historical change in a country gripped by paranoia. Schama's startling revisionist synthesis is enriched by over 200 illustrations bringing popular arts and revolutionary fervor to life. 40,000 first printing; BOMC main selection. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The appearance of this book is certain to be one of the main publishing events of the bicentennial year of the French Revolution. It blends gritty details about everyday life with an old-fashioned, dramatic narrative form. Among other things, Schama argues that the Old Regime fell not because it was stagnant but because it was moving too fast. Unlike Marxists and ``new historians,'' Schama stresses the importance of individual events and people. He detects the emergence of a patriotic culture of citizenship in the decades preceding 1789 and explains how citizenship came to be a public expression of an idealized family during the Revolution. One criticism: there are no footnotes citing sources. Despite this flaw, Schama's book will please scholars and a wide general readership.-- Thomas J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
YA-- This well-written, thoroughly documented book should be on every high-school library shelf. It explains the self-destructive, bloody orgy that occurred in France but not in England or Prussia, countries in similar states of poverty and with similarly deprived, disenfranchised populaces. Schama theorizes that the cause of France's revolution lies in the self-deception of the ruling intelligentsia, who believed that they could make a Utopian France by allowing controlled violence, murder, and the destruction of property in the name of liberty, and all to exist simultaneously with good government. Schama presents Talleyrand, Lafayette, and others with more understanding than they are given in most histories, setting them amidst a web of violence of their own making. This book speaks to today's world, as nations strive to move from despotism to democracy. A more modern view of these same problems is found in Z. Brzezinski's The Grand Failure (Scribners , 1989) .--Barbara Batty, Port Arthur I.S.D., TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Schama (History/Harvard), author of Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 and The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, offers an epic new history of the French Revolution in honor of this year's bicentenary. Utilizing day-to-day accounts of people ordinary and not so ordinary, presenting them in the highly accessible manner of traditional narrative, Schama synthesizes many theories that have populated the historical writings about this era. Thematically, his most important contribution is in revealing French culture and society in the reign of Louis XVI to have been ""troubled more by its addiction to change than resistance to it."" Similarly, he contends that ""much of the anger that fired revolutionary violence arose from the hostility towards modernization, rather than impatience with the speed of its progress."" Thus, the ""new class"" that arose against the monarchy turns out to have been not new at all--but rather doctors, lawyers, noblemen, priests, and other professionals. In the end, Schama appears to have a closer affinity with Tocqueville than has been seen in a century. He chastises the Revolution as having actually been destructive of all the little triumphs of modernization that had been accumulating under the old regime (""Marseille and Lyon only recovered as the Revolution receded. . .""), and all for a cause that produced no great social transformations and which only relieved Frenchmen's extraordinary taxes as their military frontier expanded: ""When that frontier suddenly retreated in 1814. . .they were stuck with the bill which, just as in 1789, they refused to pay, sealing the Empire's fate."" As for advances of the rural poor, Schama argues that ""the Revolution was just an interlude in the inexorable modernisation of property rights that had been well under way before 1789."" Indeed, the major legacy of the Revolution, as he sees it, is a negative one: ""the invention of a prodigious new kind of warrior state,"" as well as a ubiquitous violence that forever marked it in blood. In all, a refreshing vision narrated in a passionate style, without sacrifice of detail. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
