Timothy Tackett is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Irvine.
Drawing on their day-to-day observations, Tackett argues that the
revolutionary process fundamentally changed the people who watched
and participated in its unfolding. As France careened in just four
years from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy to
democratic republic and then descended into the Terror, citizens
veered too...By attending to the role of emotions in propelling the
Terror, Tackett steers a more nuanced course than many previous
historians have managed...Imagined terrors, as...Tackett very
usefully reminds us, can have even more political potency than real
ones.
-- David A. Bell The Atlantic
[Tackett] analyzes the mentalit� of those who became 'terrorists'
in 18th-century France...In emphasizing weakness and uncertainty
instead of fanatical strength as the driving force behind the
Terror, ...Tackett...contributes to an important realignment in the
study of French history.
-- Ruth Scurr The Spectator
[A] boldly conceived and important book...This is a
thought-provoking book that makes a major contribution to our
understanding of terror and political intolerance, and also to the
history of emotions more generally. It helps expose the complexity
of a revolution that cannot be adequately understood in terms of
principles alone.
-- Alan Forrest Times Literary Supplement
The work of Timothy Tackett on the French Revolution has made him
one of its most influential recent historians.
-- William Doyle Literary Review
Drawing on contemporary accounts, Tackett vividly describes [the
events of early 1789], showing how the excitement of political
change was muted by fear of chaos...Throughout his book, Tackett
shadowboxes with Tocqueville, who argued that the Revolution merely
reconstituted the centralization of the old regime. Tackett's more
convincing argument is that there was an abrupt disjunction from
past structures.
-- Gavin Jacobson London Review of Books
[A] grippingly written and deeply insightful book.
-- Robert Zaretsky Los Angeles Review of Books
[Tackett] 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.
-- G. P. Cox Choice
Essential reading for anyone interested in how revolutions devolve
into terror. Beautifully written, superbly documented, and fair and
balanced in its judgments, it will be a landmark of scholarship for
decades to come.
-- Lynn Hunt, author of Writing History in the Global Era
A wonderful book, a veritable masterpiece. Tackett finds new
sources to answer one of the oldest questions about the French
Revolution: why did the deputies of the National Assembly put the
Terror in place? In a captivating synthesis of the entire
Revolution, he captures its drama and emotion, the fluctuating
joys, anxieties, and fears of those who lived through unprecedented
events.
-- David Garrioch, author of The Making of Revolutionary Paris
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