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Title details for The Age of Revolutions by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal - Available

The Age of Revolutions

And the Generations Who Made It

by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal
ebook
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A panoramic, "persuasive and inspiring" (New Yorker) new history of the revolutionary decades between 1760 and 1825, from North America and Europe to Haiti and Spanish America, showing how progress and reaction went hand in hand
The revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas over seven decades, from 1760 to 1825, created the modern world. Revolutionaries shattered empires, toppled social hierarchies, and birthed a world of republics. But old injustices lingered on and the powerful engines of revolutionary change created new and insidious forms of inequality. 
 
In The Age of Revolutions, historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal offers the first narrative history of this entire era. Through a kaleidoscope of lives both familiar and unknown—from John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Napoleon to an ambitious French naturalist and a seditious Peruvian nun—he retells the revolutionary epic as a generational story. The first revolutionary generation, fired by radical ideas, struggled to slip the hierarchical bonds of the old order. Their failures molded a second generation, more adept at mass organizing but with an illiberal tint. The sweeping political transformations they accomplished after 1800 etched social and racial inequalities into the foundations of modern democracy. 
 
A breathtaking history spanning three continents, The Age of Revolutions uncovers how the period’s grand political transformations emerged across oceans and, slowly and unevenly, over generations.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 20, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781541603202

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781541603202
      • File size: 31079 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      January 12, 2024

      Perl-Rosenthal (history, Univ. of Southern California; Citizen Sailors) demonstrates that the period between 1760 and 1825 could be called the Age of Revolutions, as numerous uprisings occurred in France, the United States, the Netherlands, Spain, Saint-Domingue, and the Spanish colonies of western and northern South America. Unfortunately, revolutions that occurred in West Africa are not discussed in this book. But Perl-Rosenthal does a good job of demonstrating that the revolutions he discusses actually effected only limited political and social transformations. Coalitions of elites and groups of ordinary people pushed for radical change, and it was the dawn of mass politics. The revolutions' outcomes were double-edged, being both conservative and liberal, egalitarian and repressive, hierarchical and democratic. Perl-Rosenthal attributes the illiberalism of the Age of Revolutions to the long learning curve for organizing revolutionary political movements. This positions his book as a major counterpoint to the conclusions presented in Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Revolution and R.R. Palmer's The Age of Democratic Revolution. VERDICT A well-researched, well-written, and thoughtful presentation that asserts that revolutionaries were challenged by creating and sustaining mass political movements. Give to readers curious about world history and current affairs.--Glen Edward Taul

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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