The coming of the terror in the French Revolution

The origins of the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror" still fascinate after two centuries of scholarship. Two explanations helping define the revolution's historians of the Left and Right might be oversimplified as "circumstance" and ideology: the more sympathetic Left sees the revolutionaries forced to abandon their liberal policies in a bloody, rational, and temporary response to invasion and counter-revolution; the more critical Right insists that terror was intrinsic to many of the ideals of 1789--pristine because untried, often impractical, Rousseauist in their corollary that opponents to these manifestations of the general will required correction or removal. Tackett (emer., Univ. of California, Irvine), while obviously mastering the traditional sources, centers his research in the letters of 80 individuals (active revolutionaries not of the first rank) in order to offer a more nuanced analysis. He shows how fear engendered by countless disappointments, betrayals, invasion, insurrection, and numbing violence on all sides, especially from the revolution's own militants, progressively turned fervent enthusiasts into conspiracy-obsessed terrorists. Tackett succeeds brilliantly; his volume is now the starting point for all efforts to understand this episode. Mandatory for modern history collections. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Gary P. Cox, Gordon State College