Roger Price (3) (1944–)

Quite unbalanced - if anything, it's a history of modern France. The period between the end of the Carolingian Empire and the ascendancy of Louis XIV is painted as a mere backdrop for what follows; the story only really begins with the Revolution; at the midpoint of the body text WWI already begins; on the other hand, there's too much detail abouth the Fifth Republic. Compare, for instance, the 5 pages given to the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), 6 pages for the July Monarchy (1830-1848), show more and 7 pages for the 2012 presidential election. show less

A pretty interesting collections of tidbits of views of the political events in France from the upheaval in 1848 to, and including, the coup d'etat of Napoleon III in 1851. It is very interesting to read how people at the time perceived and interpreted the events. As for one thing the idea of a split between the political question (a constitution and parliamentary reform) and a social question (right to work, alleviating poverty) is not a division made by later historians but is part of the show more discourse at the time.

The text's are a wide collection of extracts from letters, articles in newspapers, court hearings, political proclamations and police reports gathered under headings written by the editor. The tidbits is left without comments or analysis except for some explanatory notes. Most are quite short, sometimes only being two or three sentences and few are longer than one page. It is a very diverse set of voices that is heard on a lot of different subjects, so don't expect to find much of a common thread.

While I love these kinds of collections they do suffer from the problem that is hard to put them into context if you are not already quite familiar with the subject. An introduction of 40 pages written by Price gives a good introduction which should make the book readable by all, but an even better understanding from the beginning would be better. So I can't recommend it as a first book on the events of 1848 in France, but it should be a good third or fourth book.

For my part I didn't feel like I got much of a deeper understanding of the events of 1848 than I already had and didn't find any funny or crazy episodes or points of view which is sometimes found in collections like these. So I give it 3 out of 5. Interesting, but not essential. show less

A good explanation as to what happened, but a little sketchy as to why we had a flurry of revolution, in Europe, during the year 1848.