Search results for ""author jeremy d. popkin""

Learn about the first time in history that people of color overthrew a European colonial regime to establish an independent country Describing the only successful slave revolt in world history, the newly revised Second Edition of A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution delivers a nuanced and rigorous treatment of the events of the Haitian Revolution of the late 18th century and early 19th century. The book describes events from the slave uprising in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791 and the emergence of its leader, Toussaint Louverture, to the declaration of independence by Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804. The new edition is updated to reflect the most recent scholarship in the field, including original research conducted by author Jeremy D. Popkin. It is a valuable resource for anyone studying independence movements in the Americas, the history of the Atlantic world, the history of the African diaspora, and the age of the American and French revolutions. Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of: The latest research on the subject of the Haitian Revolution, including new discoveries by the author and other scholars Coverage of the post-revolutionary period up to 1843, a period of intense interest in recent scholarship A clear and accessible approach to the subject that doesn’t assume or require any previous knowledge of this period in history Perfect for undergraduate students of history taking courses like the History of the Atlantic World, History of the Revolutionary Era, Latin American History to 1820, and History of the African Diaspora, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution is also an ideal resource for high school teachers seeking a challenging resource for AP World History students.

Read more less

Panorama of Paris offers English-language readers an introduction to one of the forgotten masterpieces of French literature, Louis-Sébastien Mercier's twelve-volume Le Tableau de Paris (published from 1781 to 1788), an important and original work that helped shape many kinds of French writing. Colorfully written, the text provides a fascinating portrait of everyday life in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution, describing the interactions of workers, street peddlers, prostitutes, police spies, actresses, noblemen, parish priests, servants, and criminals. Based on Helen Simpson's lively 1933 abridged translation, this edition includes seven newly translated chapters and an introduction by Jeremy D. Popkin.Earlier authors had described Paris's monuments and the lives of its wealthy elites, but Mercier was the first to try to capture in words the texture of its everyday life. His text, contemporary with Rousseau's Confessions, is the first attempt to write the autobiography of a unique urban community. His writing deeply influenced Balzac and other nineteenth-century French novelists and continues to serve as a major source of social and cultural history for French historians.Panorama of Paris will fascinate all lovers of Paris and its history. It should be of special interest to students of French literature and history, and to anyone interested in the origins of modern attitudes toward city life.

Read more less

Though history and autobiography both claim to tell true stories about the past, historians have traditionally rejected first-person accounts as subjective and therefore unreliable. What then, asks Jeremy D. Popkin in History, Historians, and Autobiography, are we to make of the ever-increasing number of professional historians who are publishing stories of their own lives? And how is this recent development changing the nature of history-writing, the historical profession, and the genre of autobiography? Drawing on the theoretical work of contemporary critics of autobiography, as well as the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Popkin reads the autobiographical classics of Edward Gibbons and Henry Adams and the memoirs of contemporary historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Peter Gay, Jill Ker Conway, and many others. He reveals the contributions that historians' life stories make to our understanding of the human experience. Historians' autobiographies, he shows, reveal how scholars arrive at their vocations, the difficulties of writing about modern professional life, and the ways in which personal stories can add to our understanding of historical events such as war, political movements, and the traumas of the Holocaust. An engrossing overview of the way historians view themselves and their profession, this work will be of interest to readers concerned with the ways in which we understand the past, as well as anyone interested in the art of life-writing.

Read more less

Zelda Popkin’s adventurous life could have made her the protagonist of one of her own novels. In his brilliant telling of the story of her life, her historian grandson, Jeremy D. Popkin, has made a singular contribution to the history of American Jewish women in the twentieth century.From the 1920s when she worked in the highly competitive and male-dominated public relations business to her rise as a million selling author of popular fiction beginning in the 1940s, including some of the earliest fiction on the holocaust and the state of Israel, Zelda’s life and work documented the rise of American Jewish women. Popkin uses Zelda’s experience to bring to life a larger story of American Jews and American women in the twentieth century, with the vividness that comes from having a lively character at its center. At the same time, this will also be a story about a woman whose powerful personality profoundly influenced several generations of a family. Popkin makes the case that even if she sometimes burnished her stories to create what he calls “legends of Zelda,” she was one of the most articulate female members of the generation of Jews who fought their way into the American middle class during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Zelda’s life is a rich source of evidence about the experience of American Jewish women and offers perspectives that are frequently at odds with analyses based on men’s lives. The story of Zelda, her generation, and its rich and significant legacy will create a compelling portrait and detailed tapestry of an iconic woman and her time.

Read more less

A Short History of the French Revolution is an up-to-date survey of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era that introduces readers to the origins and events of this turbulent period in French history, and historians’ interpretations of these events.The book covers all aspects of the Revolution, including the political, social, and cultural origins of the Revolution, and its causes, events, and aftermath. It provides readers with a full, and yet concise, overview of the Revolution that helps them easily understand the key elements of the subject. Fully updated and revised, this new edition allows students to engage with the most current work on the subject with increased attention given to women’s role in the Revolution, full coverage of the struggles over race and slavery, a new emphasis on the populist element in revolutionary politics, and an expanded discussion of the historiography of the era.Supported by learning objectives, critical thinking questions, and suggestions for further reading, this is the perfect introduction to the French Revolution for students of French and European History in the late eighteenth century.

Read more less

The only truly successful slave uprising in the Atlantic world, the Haitian Revolution gave birth to the first independent black republic of the modern era. Inspired by the revolution that had recently roiled their French rulers, black slaves and people of mixed race alike rose up against their oppressors in a bloody insurrection that led to the burning of the colony's largest city, a bitter struggle against Napoleon's troops, and, in 1804, the founding of a free nation. Numerous firsthand narratives of these events survive, but their invaluable insights into the period have languished in obscurity - until now. In "Facing Racial Revolution", Jeremy D. Popkin unearths these documents and presents excerpts from more than a dozen accounts written by white colonists trying to come to grips with a world that had suddenly disintegrated. These dramatic writings give us our most direct portrayal of the actions of the revolutionaries, vividly depicting encounters with the uprising's leaders - Toussaint L'ouverture, Boukman, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines - as well as putting faces on many of the anonymous participants in this epochal moment. Popkin's expert commentary on each selection provides the necessary background about the authors and the incidents they describe, while also addressing the complex question of the witnesses' reliability and urging the reader to consider the implications of the narrators' perspectives. Along with the American and French revolutions, the birth of Haiti helped shape the modern world. The powerful, moving, and sometimes troubling testimonies collected in Facing Racial Revolution significantly expand our understanding of this momentous event.

Read more less

At the center of this book stands the story of a great but forgotten newspaper: the Gazette de Leyde, edited by Jean Luzac from 1772 to 1798. A French-language biweekly newspaper published in the Dutch city of Leiden from 1677 to 1811, the Gazette de Leyde was regarded as the international newspaper of record, occupying the cultural niche filled today by the New York Times and Le Monde.Jeremy D. Popkin reconstructs the Gazette's history, providing a comprehensive picture of the environment that produced it, how it gathered and printed its reports, its relationship with its readers, and the way it depicted the great events of three critical decades. In rich detail he shows that absolutist regimes often cooperated with the Gazette's editors, providing information and condoning its publication in open violation of their own censorship regimes.He also examines the Dutch context which fostered both the freedom that made the paper's publication possible and the technology and business skills that allowed for its rapid publication and successful marketing. In addition, he draws on a wide reading of the press of the period to compare the Gazette with other major newspapers. He concludes with a treatment of the paper's fortunes during the era of the French Revolution.

Read more less

The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society -- even if, after more than two hundred years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society. We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all of their brilliance and vengefulness; we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI; we see women demanding equal rights and black slaves wresting freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles; and we follow the rise of Napoleon out of the ashes of the Reign of Terror.Based on decades of scholarship, A New World Begins is the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.

Read more less

The French Revolution was the "big bang" out of which all the elements of modern politics and social conflicts were formed. Democracy, populism, liberalism, conservatism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, abolitionism, and "enlightened" imperialism are heir to the momentous upheaval that began in Paris in 1789. To some, the French Revolution might seem only a distant memory of a middle-sized country, but as esteemed historian Jeremy Popkin demonstrates in A New World Begins, the principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society -- even if, after more than two hundred years, these ideals have not been realized and are still often contested.The French Revolution is also perhaps the most dramatic episode in human history. Popkin takes us from the storming of the Bastille and the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, and from the descent of the Reign of Terror (and the execution of Louis XIV) to the rise of Napoleon. His gripping narrative follows the French revolutionaries as they attempted to realize the principle that people "are born and remain free and equal in rights," and he shows how this revolutionary idea led both to incredible progress and murderous conflicts in the span of mere months. He paints vivid portraits of the (in)famous leaders of the Revolution, including Robespierre, Danton and Mirabeau and at the same time surfaces lesser-known figures, such as Jean-Marie Goujon, the idealistic Jacobin who told his beloved she would always be second in his mind to the Fatherland and François Molin, the anti-revolutionary priest who became so accustomed to leading underground religious services that he trembled when he performed mass in public again for the first time. This masterful account is also the first to show how women and violence in France's overseas possessions helped determine the course of the Revolution.Drawing on a career spent studying the Revolution and synthesising the last thirty years of historical scholarship, Popkin gives us a history of the French Revolution for our own time, when so many of the Revolution's legacies are facing renewed challenges across the world.

Read more less