Revolutions is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of
revolutions in terms of fleeting events such as the Fall of the Bastille or the Storming of
the Winter Palace. In reality they take decades to burn out if they ever do. One of our great
historians Donald Sassoon takes the long view of some of the most celebrated upheavals: the
English Civil War which killed a king the American War of Independence which ejected the
British but allowed slavery to persist the French Revolution which produced the Rights of Man
and years of instability the national revolutions that unified Italy and Germany and the
Russian and Chinese revolutions which transformed the twentieth century. Revolutions adroitly
compares these historical juggernauts to the many rebellions coups and tumults that time
forgot. It is a history rich in irony and surprises. ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ was first sung by
English troopers to make fun of dishevelled American colonials. The Long March of retreating
Chinese Communists assumed a mythical dimension on a par with Washington crossing the Delaware.
As Sassoon shows in this tour de force account revolutions usually catch revolutionaries
them-selves by surprise and the consequences are difficult to fathom. Revolutions will
change how you think about the transformative moments in history both big and small. ‘Unique
and encyclopaedic…a monument to streetwise and cosmopolitan scholarship’ Guardian (for The
Culture of the Europeans ) ‘Sometimes playful sometimes caustic but always to the point. The
doyen of comparative historians’ Ferdinand Mount Times Literary Supplement (for The Anxious
Triumph )
