Search results for ""Author David A. Bell""

Chapter1:Introduction.- Chapter2:Race, Revolution, and Celebrity: the Case of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George.- Chapter3:Ourika and the Chevalier de Boufflers.- Chapter4:The Revolutionary Rebirth of Jean-Paul Marat.- Chapter5:Navigating the Emotional Storm of 1791: The Lamarque Family in Paris, the Landes, and Saint Lucia.- Chapter6:A Jacobin Itinerary: The Biography of a Parisian Printer.- Chapter7:A Muslim Jacobin'? Ahmad Khan and the Eurocentric Pitfalls of Inclusive' History.- Chapter8:Money, Manhood, and Revolutionary Biography: The Limits of Voluntary Selfhood.- Chapter9:Time and the Duchess: Revolution and Temporality in the Letters of the Duchess d'Elbeuf, 1788-94.- Chapter10:Economic Lives in the French Revolution. A Tale of Three Cousins.- Chapter11:The Vengeance of a Province: Alexandre Rousselin and his Accusers.- Chapter12:Tocqueville, Napoleon, and the Writing of Biography in a Democratic Age.

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This Very Short Introduction provides a concise, accurate, and lively portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte's character and career, situating him firmly in historical context. David Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility--for both good and ill--that Napoleon represented. By his late twenties, Napoleon was already one of the greatest generals in European history. At thirty, he had become absolute master of Europe's most powerful country. In his early forties, he ruled a European empire more powerful than any since Rome, fighting wars that changed the shape of the continent and brought death to millions. Then everything collapsed, leading him to spend his last years in miserable exile in the South Atlantic. Bell emphasizes the importance of the French Revolution in understanding Napoleon's career. The revolution made possible the unprecedented concentration of political authority that Napoleon accrued, and his success in mobilizing human and material resources. Without the political changes brought about by the revolution, Napoleon could not have fought his wars. Without the wars, he could not have seized and held onto power. Though his virtual dictatorship betrayed the ideals of liberty and equality, his life and career were revolutionary.

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This special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly brings together scholars from a range of disciplines—including philosophy, anthropology, and literature—who are committed to thinking about the condition of contemporary black life. Moving among Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean, this issue demonstrates the vibrancy and historical roots of Africana thought and philosophy. One essay reveals the intricate richness of Africana thought, moving through psychoanalysis, folktales, Western metaphysics, and a critique of the political. Another essay offers a cautionary tale about the prospects for black life in the United States, even in the wake of Barack Obama’s historic political victory. A third essay argues that a “dead zone”—a place where black lives are lost, where hopes are dashed, where history has failed the black subject—exists between the black elite and the disenfranchised black underclass. Still another essay addresses how the discourse about the political has triumphed over everything else in considerations of colonialism and its aftermath and proposes that a turn to culture might offer a new thinking of black futures.

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