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Citizens (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

CITIZENS is a massive work that tells its large story by anecdote and intimate detail. Schama, especially in the first half of the book, builds his story with brilliant touches of insight into the many curious individuals of the period. The reader is introduced to a Marie-Antoinette who is far from being stupid or insensitive. The French, however, never really took to her, since she was a foreigner; she become the target of scandalous rumors which eventually played into the hands of the most radical of the revolutionaries. Schama wishes to debunk the theory that the aristocracy was old and feeble and without a lucid thought in its collective head. In this account, Louis XVI appears as a kindly but indecisive monarch who, in the end, could not be protected, even by his most profound and loyal supporters. There are more striking representatives of the vitality of the aristocracy before the Revolution, evidencing a surprising willingness to embrace certain democratic ideals.

Schama presents the Comte de Mirabeau, for example, as a towering force who could have saved the monarch if he had not died in 1791 at the age of forty-two. The Marquis de Lafayette had been a hero who fought in the American Revolution, but his romanticized vision fell out of favor with the Jacobin leaders who were to steer the course of the French Revolution. Mirabeau had hoped that France would follow the British model and become a constitutional state, while Lafayette held up the American model. Schama argues quite forcefully that the Revolution was leading France into becoming a totalitarian state.

The pace of CITIZENS seems to be controlled by the historical events themselves. The first half of the book, which ends with the storming of the Bastille, is almost overly detailed and anecdotal. The second half, though, moves swiftly, with only cursory anecdotes. The bloody course of the Revolution takes over, and Schama can only state his disgust. CITIZENS is a marvelous reading experience. Although some of the sections tend to blur, Schama breathes life into this monumental historical narrative.

Sources for Further Study

Chicago Tribune. April 2, 1989, XIV, p.6.

The Christian Science Monitor. July 14, 1989, p.13.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. May 21, 1989, p.4.

The New Republic. CC, April 17, 1989, p.35.

The New York Review of Books. XXXVI, April 13, 1989, p.11.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIV. March 19, 1989, p.1.

The New Yorker. LXV, April 17, 1989, p.131.

The Washington Post Book World. XIX, April 2, 1989, p.1.

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