Books by Robert Darnton
“He tracks back to see how one of the great revolutions of history, in 1789, could possibly have happened, how the unthinkable happened, and how the will of the people can overthrow the power of kings. It takes you to people who are suffering from hunger and penury and oppressed by the nobles, but it’s really looking at ideas, and how ideas circulate. The medium is the message, so it’s looking at the ‘nouvelles’— the newssheets and newspapers and pamphlets and rumour.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize
Susan Brigden, Historian
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
by Robert Darnton
He takes a source which is quite tricky and clearly not true and looks at what cultural world it tells us about, how it reflects peasant society.
The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
by Robert Darnton
Darnton discovered the archive of a publishing firm that smuggled books into France before the revolution
Interviews where books by Robert Darnton were recommended
Reading the Romantics, recommended by William St Clair
Who read Byron in his time? How much did a copy of Wordsworth cost? The scholar guides us through the astonishing history of reading in the Romantic period of English literature
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1
The Return of Martin Guerre
by Natalie Zemon Davis -
2
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
by Robert Darnton -
3
Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-1700
by David Levine & Keith Wrightson -
4
The History of Myddle
by Richard Gough -
5
Vermeer's Hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world
by Timothy Brook
The best books on Microhistory, recommended by Jonathan Healey
The best books on Microhistory, recommended by Jonathan Healey
The historian defines and discusses micro-history, choosing five books that use historical minutiae to answer big questions about the past.
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1
The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789
by Robert Darnton -
2
France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain
by Julian Jackson -
3
Monet: The Restless Vision
by Jackie Wullschläger -
4
Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849
by Christopher Clark -
5
Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire
by Nandini Das
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize, recommended by Susan Brigden
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize, recommended by Susan Brigden
If you’re looking for nonfiction with a literary sensibility and a historical bent, the books highlighted by the annual Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize are a great place to start. British historian Susan Brigden, author of Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest and one of the prize’s judges, talks us through the 2024 shortlist — from war and revolution to the splendours of Mughal India and Monet’s garden at Giverny.
