Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 8, 2010 12:54:22 GMT -5
Just finished The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life by David Lawday:
www.amazon.com/Giant-French-Revolution-Danton-Life/dp/0802119336/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281289457&sr=1-6
Even if you have little knowledge of, or interest in, the French Revolution, this is a great, quick, entertaining read. Lawday is a talented writer, who brings the people and events of those tumultuous times to life. Naturally, the emphasis is on Danton, not Robespierre, who is typically the focus of books on the French Revolution. But, Danton is much the more interesting, flamboyant, charismatic and "revolutionary" of the two. Unlike most of the zealots who gave rise to the Terror and later the brief, brutal "Great Terror," Danton seems to have been torn between his belief that revolution inevitably required blood (a view Jefferson seems to have shared) and his own more humanitarian objectives. At least in Lawday's telling, Danton, who came from the farms of the countryside, had a greater empathy and identity with the poor and really saw the goal of the revolution as making life better for all French people. He was, however, also a politician who sometimes allowed the flow of events carry him to decisions that were often pragmatic and brutal, providing no benefit to people and ratcheting up fear and terror. He doesn't seem to have really thought that King Louis XVI deserved to be executed, but supported it anyway when he concluded that nothing was going to prevent it anyway and, by doing so, avoided being castigated later on as a closet royalist. His fears were well-founded and, in the end, that and similar trumped up charges would be leveled at him to justify his own trip the guillotine. There are few examples in history to match the utter chaos and madness that consumed the French Revolution at the peak of its violence and terror, a period that consumed the very founders of the terror itself, including Robespierre and Danton themselves.
Lawday really brings those times and people to life.
Allen
www.amazon.com/Giant-French-Revolution-Danton-Life/dp/0802119336/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281289457&sr=1-6
Even if you have little knowledge of, or interest in, the French Revolution, this is a great, quick, entertaining read. Lawday is a talented writer, who brings the people and events of those tumultuous times to life. Naturally, the emphasis is on Danton, not Robespierre, who is typically the focus of books on the French Revolution. But, Danton is much the more interesting, flamboyant, charismatic and "revolutionary" of the two. Unlike most of the zealots who gave rise to the Terror and later the brief, brutal "Great Terror," Danton seems to have been torn between his belief that revolution inevitably required blood (a view Jefferson seems to have shared) and his own more humanitarian objectives. At least in Lawday's telling, Danton, who came from the farms of the countryside, had a greater empathy and identity with the poor and really saw the goal of the revolution as making life better for all French people. He was, however, also a politician who sometimes allowed the flow of events carry him to decisions that were often pragmatic and brutal, providing no benefit to people and ratcheting up fear and terror. He doesn't seem to have really thought that King Louis XVI deserved to be executed, but supported it anyway when he concluded that nothing was going to prevent it anyway and, by doing so, avoided being castigated later on as a closet royalist. His fears were well-founded and, in the end, that and similar trumped up charges would be leveled at him to justify his own trip the guillotine. There are few examples in history to match the utter chaos and madness that consumed the French Revolution at the peak of its violence and terror, a period that consumed the very founders of the terror itself, including Robespierre and Danton themselves.
Lawday really brings those times and people to life.
Allen