"Judicious, balanced, and admirably clear at every point. This is quite the calmest and least abusive history of the Revolution you will ever read."
Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books
Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw?
Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.
Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, Fatal Purity is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.
"Judicious, balanced, and admirably clear at every point. This is quite the calmest and least abusive history of the Revolution you will ever read."
Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books
Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw?
Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.
Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, Fatal Purity is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.
Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
432Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
432eBook(First Edition)
Related collections and offers
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781466805781 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
Publication date: | 04/17/2007 |
Sold by: | Macmillan |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 432 |
Sales rank: | 201,267 |
File size: | 802 KB |
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Explore More Items
The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America’s greatest and most influential families—the
Winner of the California Book Award
A searching portrait of an iconic figure long shrouded in myth by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of an
An absorbing, insightful profile of the revolutionary leader, president, husband, and father from one of our best historians, now in a beautiful new package.
John Adams was unique among the
As epic in vision and rigorous in detail as Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson series, the definitive account of Barack Obama’s life before he became the 44th president of the United
Two decades after the publication of The Black Book of Communism, nearly everyone is or at least should be, aware of the immense evil produced by that devilish ideology first hatched when Karl Marx
One of history's most misunderstood figures, Marie Antoinette represents the extravagance and the decadence of pre-Revolution France. Yet there was an innocence about Antoinette, thrust as a child
The story of a pivotal president who watched over our westward expansion and solidified the dream of Jacksonian democracy
James K. Polk was a shrewd and decisive commander in chief, the youngest
From the great courts, glittering palaces, and war-ravaged battlefields of the seventeenth century comes the story of four
During the Gilded Age, which saw the dawn
‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ - William Shakespeare
‘I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.’ -