Readable non-fiction about the French Revolution

December 29, 2015 8:35 AM

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, precisely, but a book of not more than 1000 or so pages that will grab me within about 30-50 pages. Non-fiction readable typically means published in the last 50 years or so, though I am flexible on this. Must be available in ebook format.
posted by jeather to Writing & Language (16 answers total)

How basic are you looking for? And what are you looking to learn?

The Very Short Introduction to the French Revolution? It is 152 pages, but they are very small pages. If £4 is too much to pay, the epub/PDF is probably floating around on the internets, if you have boolean Google-fu.

If something more popular, History Today has a large category archive of essays on the French Revolution.

Alternatively, if reading per se is not a requirement, try the Khan Academy videos on the French Revolution or Crash Course World History: French Revolution.
posted by idlethink at 9:30 AM on December 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Citizens is probably still the authoritative all-encompassing book on the French Revolution. It's not short, but it captivated me pretty instantly. Available at least in a Kindle edition.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:45 AM on December 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

I found the first half of Citizens utterly compelling, but once the revolution becomes an apparently endless sequence of warring factions, one replacing the other without apparent end, I lost the will to keep reading. It’s also not short.
posted by pharm at 10:14 AM on December 29, 2015

The Black Count by Tom Reiss is very readable, but it focuses on the biography of Alex Dumas, the father and grandfather of the writers and a general in the Revolution. It also touches other characters like the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
posted by sukeban at 10:32 AM on December 29, 2015

Response by poster: Ok, so I seem to have been unclear. What I mean is that within 30-50 pages I should no longer feel like the book is a slog. I know sometimes it takes a while to get hooked, but I give non-fiction longer than fiction. (Is this editable by mods?)
posted by jeather at 10:43 AM on December 29, 2015

Mod note: Edited the post to make the length requirement clearer.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:54 AM on December 29, 2015

If you're not looking for an ebook per se, you might try out Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast, which recently concluded its 50-episode run throughout the French Revolution. Duncan is pretty great at making the history engaging and explaining the motivations of the myriad factions.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:33 AM on December 29, 2015

Try Christopher Hibbert's The Days of the French Revolution.
posted by bearwife at 1:04 PM on December 29, 2015

Or, if you want more than an engaging look at key days in the Revolution, try Hibbert's equally readable overview book, The French Revolution.
posted by bearwife at 1:07 PM on December 29, 2015

Vive la Revolution! by Mark Steel is a well-researched but comic nonfiction account of the Revolution. It's written by a lefty stand-up comic from the UK, and is pretty flagrantly partisan, but it's a passionate and funny account with a lot of good stories.
posted by graymouser at 1:07 PM on December 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

> Citizens is probably still the authoritative all-encompassing book on the French Revolution.

It is neither authoritative nor all-encompassing (and it has a pretty obvious conservative bias), but it's a damn good read and will prime you for more detailed and scholarly reads if that's what you want.
posted by languagehat at 5:50 PM on December 29, 2015

Sometimes a biography is the best way to learn about a time period. Marie Antoinette is the most obviously interesting character, but there are also Robespierre, Marat, etc.
posted by jfwlucy at 7:05 PM on December 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

They are not new (although some were translated in the 50s and 60s) but when I went through my French Revolution phase I read a couple of different memoirs by people who lived through the Revolution. Lots of them were scanned by Google so you can read them as pdf copies. But you have to be willing to read old time English and there are a LOT of them to pick through. On the plus side, they're usually short.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:12 PM on December 29, 2015

I'm seconding the recommendation of Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcasts, if you're cool with podcasts. There's an astonishing amount of information put forward in an engaging, relatable way; after listening to it, I felt like I understood the French Rev so much more than I had before. Another plus is that it lacks Schama's appalling conservatism. (I tried to read "Citizens" several times, but it always pissed me off.)
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 8:14 PM on December 29, 2015

Here's a useful short annotated bibliography.
posted by languagehat at 8:52 AM on December 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I completely loved Twelve Who Ruled, though the Kindle edition is a little pricey. It focuses on the individuals who made up the Committee for Public Safety, who essentially ran the show in the Revolution's later years. It's engaging, readable, and fairly unbiased.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:45 AM on December 30, 2015