The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice “This captivating history of the decades leading up to the French Revolution…immerse[s] readers in what agitated Parisians read, wore, ate and sang on the way to toppling the monarchy of Louis XVI.” —New York Times Book Review A groundbreaking account of the coming of the French Revolution from a historian of worldwide acclaim. When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered an event of global consequence: the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. Most historians account for the French Revolution by viewing it in retrospect as the outcome of underlying conditions such as a faltering economy, social tensions, or the influence of Enlightenment thought. But what did Parisians themselves think they were doing—how did they understand their world?