Magnificent Rebels Audiobook By Andrea Wulf cover art

Magnificent Rebels

The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

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Magnificent Rebels

By: Andrea Wulf
Narrated by: Julie Teal
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About this listen

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award ©

From the Costa Prize-winning author of The Invention of Nature, Magnificent Rebels is a riveting, eye-opening biography of the first Romantics: a revolutionary group of friends based in the small German town of Jena whose modern ideas transformed society and the way we lead our lives today.

In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena, through poetry, drama, philosophy and science, they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics.

Their way of understanding the world still frames our lives and being. We're still empowered by their daring leap into the self. We still think with their minds, see with their imagination and feel with their emotions. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. This extraordinary group of friends changed our world. It is impossible to imagine our lives, thoughts and understanding without the foundation of their ground-breaking ideas.

©2022 Andrea Wulf (P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Philosophy Science & Technology Western Western Europe French Revolution
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Critic reviews

Magnificent Rebels is - well - magnificent. This is how such books should be written, with clarity, passion and delight. A thrilling intellectual adventure (John Banville, Book of the Year)
Andrea Wulf is that rare historian who makes the past feel present and turns distant lives into gripping stories of the human heart. Magnificent Rebels is an absolute masterpiece: mesmerising, heartbreaking and incredibly timely, it is an important reminder that the desire to be true to oneself transcends time and borders (AMANDA FOREMAN)
This is a magnificent book, fascinating in its focus and breathtaking in its scope and sweep. It is a work of formidable scholarship worn lightly; of complex intellectual history told evocatively, absorbingly, compellingly. Wulf's superb prose draws us deeply into the lives and minds of this remarkable circle of people, who together explored the breathtaking possibilities - and tremendous risks - of free will, individual creativity and liberty (ROBERT MACFARLANE)

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