Norman Hampson: 2 books

The revolutionary movement which began in 1787 disrupted every aspect of French society, rising to a pitch of such extreme violence that the effects are still felt in France today. The Revolution was the product of social tensions that developed throughout France in the second half of the eighteenth...

Armed with the insights of the scientific revolution, the men of the Enlightenment set out to free mankind from its age-old cocoon of pessimism and superstition and establish a more reasonable world of experiment and progress. Yet by the 1760s, this optimism about man and society had almost evaporated....