REVOLUTIONARY TEMPER: PARIS 1748-1789 (PB)

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 as the outcome of underlying conditions such as a faltering economy, class conflict or Enlightenment ideology, but Robert Darnton's work goes further by explaining the hidden dynamics of history, never more so than in this exceptional account. It adds a new dimension, the perceptions of contemporary Parisians, which allows us to see these momentous decades afresh, considering those at the centre of the Revolution, what they thought was happening at the time and how it guided their actions.