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Summary: The French Revolution - The Ripples Are Still Being Felt!
Review: The French Revolution - which began as a series of reforms and ended by devouring its leaders - was the first of the great upheavals on the continent. It is the subject here of history professor and popular historian Simon Schama, who has written another of his eminently readable books.
The French Revolution was inspired by the American War of Independence, which the French supported as part of their continuing struggle with Great Britian. However, while the American leaders had a firm grasp on the principles of government and a good British model on which to build, the French were inspired by a different set of ideas and had little idea of exactly what would replace the Ancien Regime. Schama has a great eye for detail and a gift for narrative history, and this large-scale work is a deep exploration of the first great revolution of the left -one whose reverberations are still being felt to this day.
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Summary: If you read one book about the French Revolution...
Review: Citizens is a very well written history of the French Revolution covering a massive amount of events, details and personalities with a good deal of background to boot. I am no expert on the subject but I have read a few books on the French Revolution including "The Oxford history of the French Revolution" and "Twelve who Ruled". I found that Citizens at succeeded where the other two failed: it managed to remain interesting. This is of course is because of Simon Schama writing style. The history of the French revolutionary period of course really is fascinating but the problem with it is unless you are scholar of French history you will need to have a decent amount of background to put the events of 1789-95 in perspective. That being said it can also be said that if you are going to read a single book on the subject Citizens provides the background and explanation required to get a true sense of what happened during the revolutionary period.
It is understandable that readers find that there is too much anecdote and detail in this book however I argue that it is all for a purpose. Simon Schama is one of those writers that doesn't simply want to provide readers with the chronology but he wants to enrich the events with information and details that not only shed light on what happened but provide a volume of supplemental knowledge that in pieces may do little but together solidify the reader's understanding of the subject. This is vastly important to getting a grasp on this book. I believe Schama uses anecdotes not as flourishes but as mnemonic devices for the readers understanding as well.
It is not meant to be a quick read. Citizens is very deliberate. Schama's verbose style is also this works beauty. Anyone who has seen him speak or seen his television programs understands that he wants to envelop his audience completely not only as way of maintaining their attention but as a service for their time spent. As a reader too, we spend time behind a book for a purpose: to learn. Schama understands this and furnishes us with enough information that we don't need to waste our time sifting through other books to gain understanding of this of the material.
Finally, to discuss the argument. Schama provides a good counter to the argument that the revolution was a people's movement. Naturally, you need power to take power, argues Schama, the revolution was not a movement of the people but the middle class who cared little for the proletariat. They certainly used them when necessary but not out of altruism but to achieve their aims. This accounts greatly for much of the horror of the period.
Of course it is not complete. Schama, or any worthy author of history, wouldn't ever make this claim. However it is a very good starting point for all readers of history and good basis to start studying more specific aspects of the period. I recommend Schama greatly because of his style. If you have enjoyed his other works you certainly will be pleased and if you are looking for a strong book to start understanding the revolution this is an excellent book for you.
--Ted Murena
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Summary: Be Open-minded (And Bring Your Thesaurus)
Review: First off, Simon Schama has a much broader vocabulary than most of us, so bring your thesaurus or dictionary when sitting down.My goal when picking up "Citizens" was to learn more about the French Revolution, something I had never studied in any depth. This book does have depth and beyond just reciting facts and figures, analyzes the men and women of the Revolution, and provides a view point on the events, often contradicting or expanding previous research and publications. I got a hell of a lot more out of "Citizens" than I ever expected. I now have a context of French Revolution not only within French History but how it compares to the American Revolution, English revolutionary struggles, and its influence on Bonaparte, the Soviets, and Europe as a whole. Sit down, bring your dictionary (and plenty of time - it took me over 10 years to pick it up and another year to read it!) and enjoy "Citizens".
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious pace outweighs artful prose
Review: I'm going to admit up front I didn't read the whole book which that and my giving it a low rating, I realize will only earn me a deluge of negative votes. So be it. I know Mr. Schama has an excellent reputation and and has a great writing style. But he is repetitous to the point of being chronologically confusing. He delves into the meanings of things, the motives of people, but he also goes around and around. I got to page 254 and realized while I had previously enjoyed the book, it was getting bogged down. He uses VERY long sentences and his explanations are often so roundabout, that they require multiple readings to absorb their meaning and context.
I take real issue with a book marketed as a popular non-fiction read and then come to find it so exhaustive in detail, it is geared to those already well read in this era. Don't make this your first read on the French Revolution. Don't bother with this book at all, unless you are already especially intrigued by the French Revolution.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, if flawed narrative.
Review: In Citizens, Simon Schama sets out to write a modern history of the French Revolution in the style of the narrative histories of the nineteenth century. In this goal he succeeds admirably. The narration is well written, entertaining, and always pertinent to the historical analysis. However, the problem lies in Mr. Schama's historical analysis itself. He portrays the aristocracy in ancien regime France as a vibrant, progressive, commercial backbone of France. Supposedly, the revolution destroyed itself when it turned to popular violence against the enlightened nobles. Schama demonizes the peasantry by portraying their actions without motives. The real sufferings and grievances of the peasantry under the nobles are ignored, while the problems of the aristocracy under the revolutionary government are given a vivid description. Furthermore, the book abruptly ends after the fall of the Jacobins. While this may be understandable so that the book does not become too long, it smacks of self-interest for the author. Perhaps the book was cut sort because the Directory period showed that a revolutionary government by the upper class also did not work, although Schama would have you believe that it was France's only hope. Still, most of the rest of the book is both spot-on and entertaining, so I find it hard not to recommend it. Read this book for a well-written overview of the Revolution, but take the book's claims with a grain of salt.
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Summary: Schama Shames the Revolutionaries
Review: Loyal readers of "Tale of Two Cities," "Scarlet Pimpernel" and the memoirs of Grace Elliot already know that the Revolution was a sordid, shabby affair, wherein People of Quality were mercilessly served up to the mob. Simon Schama's "Citizens" simply fleshes out the story. Incontrovertibly, the national standard of living under Louis XVI was far, far higher than under any of the various Republican directorates, much less the Consulate or the Empire; freedom of expression was greater, social mobility existed, crops were harvested and foreign policy, though far from perfect, at least had some rationality. As Schama painstakingly demonstrates, the Revolution was triggered not by a seething popular undercurrent but from a relatively isolated financial crisis, in which the King found it impossible to repay the national debt without the assistance of various disaffected factions within the aristocracy and upper middle classes. His only solution - a reconvening of the Three Estates - gave those factions the opportunity to grab power; the later rioting of the sans-couluttes and the red-capped Paris mob was merely an expansion of that earlier power struggle. Even the great mythologized event of 1789 - the storming of the Bastille - was a fraud: only seven prisoners were actually inside: four forgers, two lunatics, and the Marquis de Sade. Humane, literate, magisterial; also contains numerous biographic passages on Necker, Lafayette, Talleyrand, Mirabeau, Malesherbes and Marat.
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Summary: Maybe the best history we have, but perversely incomplete
Review: Rousseau's legacy is one of the most fascinating details of the book. Schama's treatment of a number of other aspects of the Revolution is also exemplary: the economic reforms that preceded the Revolution; the Vendeean uprising and the bloody reprisals; the September massacres; the terror in Lyons; the careers of Talleyrand, Lafayette, and David. But Schama's anti-Romanticism reminds me of Burke's. In addition, he conceives of reform as a basic concept encompassing both economic and representational reforms; while in the American Revolution, these were clearly linked, the French Revolution was entirely different. Worse, in this nine-hundred-page book, he leaves too much out: Madame Roland is barely mentioned; the tennis court oath is not explained; nor is the Paris commune; and instead of ending where the Revolution really ended, on December 25, 1799, with the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte, Schama closes his book, without explaining why, with the execution of Robbespierre four years earlier.
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Summary: spectacular panorama of a watershed
Review: This has got to be one of the best history books I have ever read. Unlike his other books, which all to often get lost in sensuous detail, this one is a perfect balance of analysis and portraits of the quirkiness of the human condition. In other words, you get a flavor for the vast array of people involved, while the narrative follows well trod lines. It is an immensely complex story. The result is a masterpiece and truly great. Schama's take on the Revolution is that what happened was far more richly textured than the crude class-based analyses that have held sway for too long. In what I believe is a convincing performance, he shows that not only was (the politically inept) Louis XVI pursuing many progressive agendas for change, but that it was the aristocrat-intellectuals who formed the basis of the Revolutionary leadership and not bourgeois or working class heroes. What made it so violent, in this reading, was the collapse of the old order and then the struggles that ensued for the control of the instruments of military and police power. It was the birth of the popular army, he concludes, and not the abstract ideals enshrined in official propaganda, that was the real legacy of the Revolution and the basis for Napoleon's later military dominance. What makes it all such a watershed event was that it was the first example of the passions unleashed by nationalist fanaticism: the jacobans led directly to the communards and then the more purified revolutionary violences of fascism and marxist-leninism. Reading of the horrors of the Terror, this is also convincing (and frightening). One of the greatest pleasures of this book is the personalities that Schama describes in loving detail, as they appear and re-appear at crucial moments. You get the heavyweights Lafayette and Talleyrand, but also innumerable lesser known characters, whose lives and fates the author takes to symbolise the Revolution's legacy. If you know Paris, you learn who a lot of the people were whose names are on the streets and the institutions, such as Necker and de la Tour du Pin. That made it especially fun for me, but that is personal. That being said, the book is occasionally uneven. Though Schama tells a great story in the most elegant of prose, there are sections that read as if it were written too fast. Moreover, the story is so complex that some basic details, such as what the people in the various factions actually thought and stood for, are lost or obscured by the endless succession of stories. Warmly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: spectacular panorama of a watershed
Review: This has got to be one of the best history books I have ever read. Unlike his other books, which all to often get lost in sensuous detail, this one is a perfect balance of analysis and portraits of the quirkiness of the human condition. In other words, you get a flavor for the vast array of people involved, while the narrative follows well trod lines. It is an immensely complex story. The result is a masterpiece and truly great. Schama's take on the Revolution is that what happened was far more richly textured than the crude class-based analyses that have held sway for too long. In what I believe is a convincing performance, he shows that not only was (the politically inept) Louis XVI pursuing many progressive agendas for change, but that it was the aristocrat-intellectuals who formed the basis of the Revolutionary leadership and not bourgeois or working class heroes. What made it so violent, in this reading, was the collapse of the old order and then the struggles that ensued for the control of the instruments of military and police power. It was the birth of the popular army, he concludes, and not the abstract ideals enshrined in official propaganda, that was the real legacy of the Revolution and the basis for Napoleon's later military dominance. What makes it all such a watershed event was that it was the first example of the passions unleashed by nationalist fanaticism: the jacobans led directly to the communards and then the more purified revolutionary violences of fascism and marxist-leninism. Reading of the horrors of the Terror, this is also convincing (and frightening). One of the greatest pleasures of this book is the personalities that Schama describes in loving detail, as they appear and re-appear at crucial moments. You get the heavyweights Lafayette and Talleyrand, but also innumerable lesser known characters, whose lives and fates the author takes to symbolise the Revolution's legacy. If you know Paris, you learn who a lot of the people were whose names are on the streets and the institutions, such as Necker and de la Tour du Pin. That made it especially fun for me, but that is personal. That being said, the book is occasionally uneven. Though Schama tells a great story in the most elegant of prose, there are sections that read as if it were written too fast. Moreover, the story is so complex that some basic details, such as what the people in the various factions actually thought and stood for, are lost or obscured by the endless succession of stories. Warmly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A detailed look at the events of the French Revolution
Review: This is a hefty volume, and while the writing is sometimes a little too academic, I managed to read the entire book over several weeks. I found this book to be very enlightening in describing the conditions in France prior to the Revolution and explaining the motivations and reasons behind the Revolution. These early portions were by far the strongest part of the book. However, I found the subsequent descriptions of the events of the Revolution to be confusing. Part of that may be due to the confusion of the Revolution itself, but it was hard to keep track of all the various individuals involved and their various relationships to each other. The book's ending was also somewhat disappointing, as it never really described how the Revolution ended with the rise of Napoleon. It seems that at least a little discussion of the relationship of the Revolution and Napoleon would have been appropriate here, but then again, the book was plenty long enough without it! Overall, an educational book, especially in the opening chapters.
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