Free and Equal: The Story of the French Revolution

"Free and Equal" will be the first comprehensive history of the French Revolution addressed to general readers in the English-speaking world in a generation. My aim is to bring this great historical drama alive for a broad audience, and to introduce them to the new perspectives on the Revolution that have emerged from the past several decades of new scholarship on the subject. In "Free and Equal," readers will encounter the debates about the rights of women and black slavery that were essential aspects of the Revolution, and see how they change our understanding of traditional topics such as the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the Reign of Terror. My book will treat the French Revolution in a global perspective, emphasizing, for example, that the sweeping reform plans introduced by French ministers in 1787 coincided with the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, called to deal with the perceived weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.