
A New World Begins
The History of the French Revolution
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Narrated by:
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Pete Cross
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Jeremy D. Popkin
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By:
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Jeremy D. Popkin
About this listen
The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society - even if, after more than 200 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 listener 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 will stand as the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.
©2019 Jeremy D. Popkin (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change.
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Worst recorded performance ever
- By M. Johnson on 05-29-25
By: Simon Schama
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The Burgundians
- A Vanished Empire: A History of 1111 Years and One Day
- By: Bart van Loo, Nancy Forest-Flier - translator
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness.
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Extraordinary story, expertly told and skillfully narrated
- By Daniel Vergara on 03-01-24
By: Bart van Loo, and others
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The Napoleonic Wars
- By: Alexander Mikaberidze
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 35 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Napoleonic Wars saw fighting on an unprecedented scale in Europe and the Americas. It took the wealth of the British Empire, combined with the might of the continental armies, almost two decades to bring down one of the world's greatest military leaders and the empire that he had created. Napoleon's ultimate defeat was to determine the history of Europe for almost 100 years. From the frozen wastelands of Russia, through the brutal fighting in the Peninsula to the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterloo, this book tells the story of the dramatic rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire.
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No description of battles
- By John Gaston on 01-15-21
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Battle Cry of Freedom
- The Civil War Era
- By: James M. McPherson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 39 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Battle Cry of Freedom vividly traces how a new nation was forged when a war both sides were sure would amount to little dragged for four years and cost more American lives than all other wars combined. Narrator Jonathan Davis powerful reading brings to life the many voices of the Civil War.
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Excellent Book
- By J. Weston on 12-11-20
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The Thirty Years War
- Europe's Tragedy
- By: Peter H. Wilson
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 33 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world.
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Less caffeine, narrator
- By Jeff Joyner on 02-12-24
By: Peter H. Wilson
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Enemy at the Gates
- The Battle for Stalingrad
- By: William Craig
- Narrated by: David Baker
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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On August 5, 1942, giant pillars of dust rose over the Russian steppe, marking the advance of the 6th Army, an elite German combat unit dispatched by Hitler to capture the industrial city of Stalingrad and press on to the oil fields of Azerbaijan. The Germans were supremely confident; in three years, they had not suffered a single defeat. The Luftwaffe had already bombed the city into ruins. German soldiers hoped to complete their mission and be home in time for Christmas.
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An Unforgettable and Haunting Read
- By Jean on 02-03-16
By: William Craig
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Operation Thunderbolt
- Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History
- By: Saul David
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe in Uganda - ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening. Days later, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers assaulted the airport terminal, killed all the terrorists, and rescued all the hostages but three who were killed in the crossfire. The assault force suffered just one fatality.
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A story of true courage and political resolve
- By Gabe Schwartz on 01-28-16
By: Saul David
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The Fortress
- The Siege of Przemysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands
- By: Alexander Watson
- Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In September 1914, just a month into World War I, the Russian army laid siege to the fortress city of Przemysl, the Hapsburg Empire's most important bulwark against invasion. For six months, against storm and starvation, the ragtag garrison bitterly resisted, denying the Russians a quick victory. Only in March 1915 did the city fall, bringing occupation, persecution, and brutal ethnic cleansing. In The Fortress, historian Alexander Watson tells the story of the battle for Przemysl, showing how it marked the dawn of total war in Europe.
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Fascinating story about eastern and Central Europe
- By John D. on 05-10-23
By: Alexander Watson
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The Teammates
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: Tate Donovan
- Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons - when they were young and seemingly indestructible - to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the audiobook is the friendship of these four very different men - Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams - who remained close for more than 60 years.
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Poignant male bounding without the smulch.
- By William R. Todd-Mancillas (Name includes hyphen and capitalized M). on 06-25-25
By: David Halberstam
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The Decameron
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Gunnar Cauthery, Alison Pettitt, and others
- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
- By John on 11-15-17
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Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
- By: Plutarch
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 83 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.
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For the Very Dedicated
- By John Pinkerton on 03-13-18
By: Plutarch
Very good.
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The French Revolution, good and bad
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Great details and well organized
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amazing review of the French Revolution.
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interesting and easy to follow
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It is well written and easy to follow. As someone who listens to a lot of books on history, I especially appreciate that the author frequently gives dates (it’s a little thing, but goes a long way).
The author is not without his biases (excusing Robespierre and his colleagues, while being critical of Napoleon), but it doesn’t detract from this sweeping story.
A great and engaging story
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This listen was at times challenging. Not lying when I had to rewind a couple of chapters in their entirety because I was lost in the weeds.
However, it was worth it. Well done. Fair. And not too dense to be inaccessible to the casual history, political science nerd like me.
Dense but Revolutionary
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An Interesting Read
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All this idealism and seeming enlightenment came a cropper. As the French Revolution moved along from the exhilaration of 1789, when the Bastille fell and a new Estates General/parliament began debating the adoption of a Constitution based mostly on the American document, things began falling apart. The French King was reluctant to surrender his powers, until forced to become a prisoner, then branded a traitor, and finally sent to the guillotine. A series of charismatic revolutionary firebrands commanded political power, then fell afoul of plotters within the Assembly, and met with the executioner as had the King. Meanwhile. France's revolutionary ardor was met with armed hostility by the rest of Europe. Wars of varying intensity erupted between France and its neighbors throughout the 1790's. This left the political rulers of France little time to tamp down the firebrands and the plotters, while boosting the leadership of ambitious military men, among these a little-known Napoleon Bonaparte.
A New World Begins is an excellent one-volume history of the Revolutionary period in France, beginning in the 1780's when the country's economy was wrecked by peasant uprisings, crop failures. and war debts (the French had spent dearly while helping the Americans defeat their British rulers). The Revolutionary years from 1789 to 1804 are extensively covered, although Napoleon's rise from minor officer in the new French army to crowning himself emperor of the French is dealt with almost as an afterthought in the final section of the book.
What I believe this book does is shout a warning from history: that with the noblest ideas of creating a peaceful, prosperous society where all citizens are equal before the law, a state can descend into anarchy. In this state, the politically strong send the weak to be executed, no one is beyond the executioner's reach, and ultimately a strongman (or woman) rises to end the madness and impose his or her will.
A Noble Idea Laid Waste by Human Frailty
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Great book
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