A marvellously captivating book, sweeping in its range, depth and erudition. Darnton traces the inexorable downfall of the old order in the decades before 1789 through the maze of Parisian café conversations, popular songs, festivals and street brawls, and shows how the hatred of despotism and the love of liberty and virtue became powerful revolutionary weapons. A towering achievement, from one of the world's most eminent historians of modern France.

Distilling a lifetime's immersion in the literary world of pre-revolutionary France, Robert Darnton's long-awaited final verdict on the Revolution's origins lays out in vivid detail how the minds of Parisians were prepared to contemplate the collapse of the regime under which they lived. With unmatched knowledge of the sources for metropolitan opinion as the monarchy stumbled into ever-deeper crises, he shows how confidence ebbed away from established ways and institutions and how by 1789 Parisians were ready for everything to be recast. A final chapter surveys the unprecedented scale and enduring importance of the Revolution that followed.

The Revolutionary Temper is more than a historical account of a city at war with a regime; it is a hymn to the power of hope. Darnton's sparkling prose and unique eye for the human detail in every complex situation is in full force here. This is his best work yet.

Standing at the summit of Robert Darnton's towering intellectual career, The Revolutionary Temper plunges the reader into the coffeeshops, workrooms, and alleys of pre-revolutionary Paris. Following the traces of songs and rumors, insults and discontent, Darnton allows us to eavesdrop, almost miraculously, on whispers nearly two and a half centuries old. Here is the hivemind of ordinary people in extraordinary times, as they shake loose the thought and feeling of ages and past, and decide - slowly, and then all at once - to begin the world anew.

What did Parisians think and gossip, sing and obsess about over the decades before the storming of the Bastille? In The Revolutionary Temper Robert Darnton paints a sumptuous mural of the eighteenth-century mind. With the Encyclopédie, with manned balloons in the air, reason seemed on a roll. With posters, pamphlets, and public readings, the written world appeared supreme. A few vicious libels, some stock market manipulation, a lurid adultery trial, one notorious diamond necklace, any number of court intrigues, skyrocketing bread prices and plunging temperatures combined, among other elements, to shake a nation to its core. A rich, beautifully crafted book that plants the reader in a Paris that feels at all times electric.

[Darnton] has become the internationally recognized doyen of scholars working in the field of eighteenth-century French history and culture ... Written in his strikingly clear prose, argued with cogency, craft and conviction, and drawing on a lifetime of distilled research ... The range and the variety of sources that Darnton deploys to penetrate the Parisian "temper" is extremely impressive ... He is a shrewd, observant, wise and unfailingly entertaining guide through these dense, thought-provoking and colourful thickets of Parisian experience.

The Revolutionary Temper is a richly researched, ambitious and fascinating history ... delicate and revealing.

A riveting synthesis of Darnton's life work ... he writes beautifully and has a weather eye for quirky detail.

It’s difficult to summarise a book of such breadth… Short chapters stand alone as delightfully intriguing stories about a society in turmoil… This book is, quite simply, a feast, but one that, thanks to superb storytelling, is easy to digest.

Darnton’s book is a very fine account of how 18th-century Parisians received and interpreted public events, putting them on the road to revolution.

Deep, rich and enthralling.

This book is, quite simply, a feast.

Robert Darnton is one of the world's greatest historians, and this is an exceptional book ... each chapter brims with life and colour ... A titanic work.

A masterpiece of historical research that will give Western readers a much better understanding of Russia's motivations and the conflict's early months

The horrific war in Ukraine rumbles on, and perhaps it's a strange time for a history of the conflict to come out, but Serhii Plokhy is the perfect historian to write it. Plokhy has lost relatives and friends in the conflict, and The Russo-Ukrainian War details with well-constructed arguments the causes and consequences of Putin's gamble. It may be current affairs, but it's difficult not to argue the invasion is historic

An utterly compelling account, deeply personal, persuasively authoritative, surely the must-read book for this challenging moment

For those trying to understand the roots of the war in Ukraine, there is no better guide than Serhii Plokhy. It's impossible to make sense of the Russian invasion of 2022 without knowing something of the history - recent and less recent - and the struggle for Ukrainian national identity; this compelling and lucid book illuminates both

The essential book for the Russia-Ukraine war - superb, accessible and erudite - by the world's chief expert. The must-read work

The thread of history is central to understanding Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Serhii Plokhy outlines this in fascinating detail and reminds us of the constant fragility of peace

Three hundred-odd pages roam through 50,000 years, and by the last it's almost impossible to disagree that infectious diseases are our permanent companion and ultimate adversary... The fluency of Kennedy's narration is remarkable, weaving Tolkien, Game of Thrones and Monty Python into memorable and accessible explanations of genetics, evolutionary biology and demography... Pathogenesis is a humbling story for humankind.

A superb achievement ... a lucid, totally compulsive read from beginning to end, chilling as well as profoundly empathetic in tone

Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe

A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder