A New World Begins - Jeremy D. Popkin, Basic Books

The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society -- even if, after more than two hundred years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society.We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all of their brilliance and vengefulness, we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI, we see women demanding equal rights and black slaves wresting freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles, and we follow the rise of Napoleon out of the ashes of the Reign of Terror. Based on decades of scholarship, A New World Begins is the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.