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The author is a pedant, I'll tell you that right now. And unless you share his pedantic outlook, you're part of the unwashed herd. Look: this was supposed to be a "Very Short Introduction" to the French Revolution, right? So nobody needs a earful on the intricacies of various historiographical debates on the subject. Nevertheless, that's what interests the author, so that's what's supposed to interest you. A more accurate title for this book would have been "A Primer on Divers Ponderous, Hair-Splitting Debates and Arcana Related to the French Revolution." At one point, the author takes Simon Schama to task over his thoroughly enjoyable Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution for "merely telling a story" without weighing one down with the more abstruse matters that historians of Doyle's brilliance are presumably consumed with. Actually, isn't that what your book, Doyle, was supposed to be doing: just telling the basic story? You couldn't do that without getting doctrinaire and pompous? Seems like you're simply jealous of Schama, whose book I found about twenty times more readable than your own. I came to this book because I enjoyed others in this series and was in need of a brief recounting of what happened shortly before and after 1789. Didn't get that. Instead I felt like I had just spent the evening with a tendentious grad student with several bones to pick.
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The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in 15 languages worldwide. Very Short Introductions available from Oxford Paperbacks: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes Augustine Henry Chadwick THE BIBLE John Riches Buddha Michael Carrithers BUDDHISM Damien Keown CLASSICS Mary Beard and John Henderson Continental Philosophy Simon Critchley COSMOLOGY Peter Coles Darwin Jonathan Howard DESCARTES Tom Sorell DRUGS Les Iversen EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Paul Langford The European Union John Pinder THE FRENCH REVOLUTION William Doyle Freud Anthony Storr Galileo Stillman Drake Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh HEGEL Peter Singer HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood HINDUISM Kim Knott HISTORY John H. Arnold HUME A. J. Ayer Indian Philosophy Sue Hamilton Intelligence Ian J. Deary ISLAM Malise Ruthven JUDAISM Norman Solomon Jung Anthony Stevens KANT Roger Scruton THE KORAN Michael Cook LITERARY THEORY Jonathan Culler LOGIC Graham Priest MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner MARX Peter Singer MEDIEVAL BRITAIN John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths MUSIC Nicholas Cook NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and H. C. G. Matthew paul E. P. Sanders POLITICS Kenneth Minogue Psychology Gillian Butler and Freda McManus ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catriona Kelly SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY John Monaghan and Peter Just SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce Socrates C. C. W. Taylor STUART BRITAIN John Morrill THEOLOGY David F. Ford THE TUDORS John Guy TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling Visit our web site for news of forthcoming titles www.oup.co.uk/vsi William Doyle The French Revolution A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford o x 2 6 d p Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipe