Citizens and Cannibals: The French Revolution, the Struggle for Modernity and the Origins of Ideological Terror - Hardcover

Sagan, Eli

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0742508315 ISBN 13: 9780742508316

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Why did the French Revolution, informed by the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, end in the Terror? This thought-provoking study explores the way in which fundamental political transitions generate both promise and anxiety, and how France's failed evolution into a modern state introduced a new scourge: the ideological terror that Hitler, Stalin and a host of other dictators would unleash on an even greater scale. This sobering analysis reminds us of the dangers we must still guard against today.

About this title

Review:

Citizens and Cannibals siezes our imagination, not with sociological theories and psychoanalytic attempts to divine the wellsptring of human iniquity, but with compelling descriptions of pernicious edicts, fanatical leaders, and innocents massacred on altars of Ideological Truth.--Michael Burns "The American Scholar "

I find the book fascinating, provocative, and enormously stimulating. Sagan's observations in this and in his earlier book, The Honey and the Hemlock, are often original and insightful and of great value in assisting the historian in understanding certain aspects of Revolutionary behavior. I have learned much from him.--Timothy Tackett, University of California, Irvine

More successfully than anyone thus far, Eli Sagan has brought us close to a real understanding of the causes of the French Revolutionary Terror, and thereby, to a comprehension of the greatest scourge of the twentieth century: ideological terror. Anyone intrigued by the paradoxes and contradictions of the modern world must read this book.--Robert Bellah, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; coauthor of Habits of the Heart

History is served well in Eli Sagan's Citizens and Cannibals. Sagan provides worthy insights into the revolutionary and evolutionary processes unleashed when nations take the wrong path to democracy. If you enjoy reading history, you will want to read this book.--Bookviews.Com

Robespierre--and later Lenin--were men of virtue, but the regimes they created spawned terror. Why? Eli Sagan's book is a comprehensive effort to provide an answer.--Daniel Bell

Eli Sagan is that great rarity--the truly independent scholar. He belongs to no school. He follows no fashion. Instead, he crafts complex, tough-minded works on huge subjects. He doesn't shy away from big questions. In this moving plea for the creation of citizens freed from the destructive burdens of resentment and paranoia, he strikes a blow for moral freedom.--Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Laura Spelman Rockeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago; author of Just War Against Terror

Citizens and Cannibals, by Eli Sagan, is fascinating and thought-provoking. It is a very important contribution to the study of the French Revolution and the origins of Ideological Terror.--Michael Kennedy, author of The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793-1795

Important and timely. . . book.--Library Journal

Recommended for serious students of the French Revolution.--Publishers Weekly

Synopsis:

What transformed moral citizens into guillotine cannibals during the French Revolution and the Great Reign of Terror? The answer, argues Eli Sagan, is the same force that has killed millions of people in the 20th-century ideological terror. This book offers a comprehensive explanation of the gruesome Terror, its causes and its consequences for the modern world. The French Revolution introduced ideological terror to the world, but Hitler and Stalin were among its 20th-century perpetrators, maintaining its survival.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0742508315
• ISBN 13: 9780742508316
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 630