Citizens - Hardcover

Schama, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394559487 ISBN 13: 9780394559483

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991

Synopsis

Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology -- a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Schama is the prize-winning author of seven acclaimed books. An art critic and essayist
for The New Yorker, he also writes and presents documentaries for BBC television. He is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and lives outside New York City.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

he dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology -- a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

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
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394559487
• ISBN 13: 9780394559483
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 948