Georges Lefebvre was one of the most highly-regarded historians of the 20th century – and a key reason for the high reputation he enjoys can be found in The Coming of the French Revolution.Lefebvre's key contribution to the debate over what remains arguably one of history's most contentious and significant events in history was to deploy the critical thinking skill of evaluation to reveal weaknesses in existing arguments about the causes of the Revolution, and analytical s...

Offering a broad and vivid survey of the culture of collecting from the French Revolution to the Belle Époque, The Purchase of the Past explores how material things became a central means of accessing and imagining the past in nineteenth-century France. By subverting the monarchical establishment, the French Revolution not only heralded the dawn of the museum age, it also threw an unprecedented quantity of artworks into commercial circulation, allowing private individuals to pose as custod...

In The Age of Revolution, Eric Hobsbawm focuses on the tumultuous late 18th and early 19th centuries. He argues that the “dual revolutions” of the time —the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution — changed the way the whole world thought about politics and power, and fundamentally shaped the modern era. ¶Hobsbawm explains how these dual revolutions created conditions in which capitalism and liberalism could rise and dominate. But while values such as liberty, free trade an...

Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged reservists with, apparently, little Nazi zeal – to willingly commit acts of genocide? Was it ideology? Was there something rotten in the German soul? Or was it – as Christopher Browning argues in this highly influential book – more a matter of conformity, a response to intolerable social and p...

Four social groups brought down the French monarchy. ¶Why? Because in 1789 each of these very different groups had compelling reasons to defy royal authority. Lefebvre, renowned as a pioneer of ‘history from below,’ believed that the origins of the revolution had to be sought not just in the maneuvering of the elites, but in the unpredictable actions of the common people. He argues that the revolution was the unforeseen consequence of four different social classes—the aristocracy, the bour...

The Age of Revolution is the first of four works by Eric Hobsbawm that collectively synthesize the ideas he developed over a lifetime spent studying the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Hobsbawm's vision is important – he was a lifelong Marxist whose view of history was shaped by a fascination with social and economic history, yet who privileged evidence over political theory – but the real power of these works, and especially The Age of Revolution, emanates fro...

Richard Evans wrote In Defence of History at a time when the historian's profession was coming under heavy attack as a result of the ‘cultural turn’ taken by the discipline during the late 1980s and the 1990s. Historians were being forced to face up to postmodern thinking, which argued that, because all texts were the product of biased writers who had incomplete information, none could be privileged above others. In this reading, there could be no objective history, merely the stu...

Before the tragedy of the Holocaust, many of the leading art and antiques dealers across Europe were Jewish, establishing dynamic cross-Channel, international and transatlantic networks. Aside from a few famous examples, however, we are only at the beginning of exploring the diversity of Jewish dealers' commercial and cultural worlds, and reflecting on the particular conditions that made possible their dramatic expansion within the profession.Adopt...

Daniel Goldhagen's study of the Holocaust offers conclusions that run directly counter to those reached by Christopher Browning, whose book Ordinary Men is also the subject of a Macat analysis. As such, the two analyses make possible some interesting critical thinking exercises focused on evaluation of the evidence used by the two historians. For Goldhagen, a chief reason for German actions was not the mundane good comradeship stressed by Browning, but a longstanding hatred of Jew...

"A lucid, muscular, and often sly reflection" on the worth and purpose of historical scholarship by the award-winning author of The Third Reich Trilogy ( Kirkus).In this volume, the renowned historian Richard J. Evans offers a fervent and deeply insightful defense of his craft and its importance to civilization. At a time when fact and historical truth are under unprecedented assault, Evans shows us why history is necessary. Taking us into the historians' ...

Sudhir Hazareesingh's How the French Think is a warm yet incisive exploration of the French intellectual tradition, and its exceptional place in a nation's identity and lifestyleWhy are the French an exceptional nation? Why do they think they are so exceptional? An important reason is that in France intellectual activity is regarded not just as the preserve of the thinking elite but for almost everyone. French thought can sometimes be austere and ...

Karl Marx is one of the most influential philosophers of all time, whose theories have shaped and directed political, economic, and social thought for 150 years. Considering Marx's life and impact, renowned philosopher Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx's thought, enabling us to grasp Marx's views as a whole. Presenting Marx as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist, Singer explains Marx's key ideas ...