Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

“It’s very vivid. He’s looking at the great revolutions of 1848, from Budapest and Vienna and Galicia and Moldavia to France and Milan and Sicily…He takes you to the particular sufferings of the peasantry and the townspeople—but finds that economic suffering may be partly a cause, but it’s not a sufficient cause of these revolutions. He’s looking to politics and political ideas…I read on, agog. It’s just full of wonders and surprises and particular people with whom you feel sympathy and the bravery of the participants in all this.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize

Susan Brigden, Historian

“Christopher Clark is one of the great historians of our moment. He writes very elegantly and smoothly, so even though it’s long, you could read shorter books that would be more of a struggle…He’s saying, ‘Hang on! This was an extraordinary moment because across pretty much the whole of Europe, there was a form of uprising or revolution.’ It happened in spring, they’d fallen out with each other by the summer, and by the autumn the counter-revolution kicked in and the whole thing was ‘over.’ But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see here. It had profound influences that we still feel today.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist

Frederick Studemann, Journalist

“Also out now is Revolutionary Spring, a new book by Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, a book that made waves with its analysis of the outbreak of World War I. In Revolutionary Spring, Clarke takes on the revolutions that spread across Europe in 1848. These are the revolutions from which ‘the Arab Spring’ would take its name, and, like its namesake, things did not go well for the revolutionaries. This is a doorstopper of a book, so not one to take on for a quick read, though well worth pursuing if you like long history books.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023

Sophie Roell, Journalist