Books about Revolutions

It's a revolution that still resonates and yet it resists easy interpretation. Lynn Hunt, a leading historian of the French Revolution, tells us what the events of 1789 and later years really meant, and what relevance they have for us today.

When William of Orange came from Holland to take the English throne in 1688, was it a foreign invasion, or a revolution from within? Yale historian, Steven Pincus, talks us through the conflicting views on the Glorious Revolution and argues for a new perspective.

The American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 upended the political order on both sides of the Atlantic. The battle of Waterloo in 1815 did not bring things to a close. Revolutionary activity continued in Europe and Latin America with varying degrees of success right through to 1848. Here political scientist Paschalis Kitromilides, Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens, discusses the various forces that drove the 'age of revolution.'

The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children’s author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia.

The American Revolution began as a war for independence but, by its end, the war had transformed the thirteen colonies into a republic. Historian T.H. Breen recommends the best books which relay the revolutionary impact of the American War of Independence.

The Industrial Revolution transformed the world forever by enabling self-perpetuating economic growth. But historians are still at odds about why the industrial revolution happened where it did and when it did. Here, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, Oxford, guides us through the debates and why they are still relevant today.

For anybody wanting to go into politics a mastery of the French Revolution is an enormous help and a knowledge of history essential, says Peregrine Worsthorne, the columnist and former editor of Britain’s Sunday Telegraph. He recommends the best books on the French Revolution, both for and against.

Countries do have to come to terms with their own history, and it's unhealthy that China has not yet come to terms with the Cultural Revolution, argues the West's leading scholar of the period, Roderick MacFarquhar. He chooses the best five books on the Cultural Revolution.

The roots of our (generally) open attitude to sex lie not in the sixties but the 1760s, says the historian and author of The Origins of Sex, who explores this earlier sexual revolution through its literature.