Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Instead of a dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital & inventive, infatuated with novelty & technology. A fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A NY Times cloth bestseller. 200 illustrations.Preface; Powers of Recall--40 Years Later; Alterations: The France of Louis XVI; New Men: Fathers & Sons, Heroes for the Times; Blue Horizons, Red Ink: Les Beaux Jours, Oceans of Debt, Money Farms & Salt Wars, Last Best Hopes: The Coachman, Last Best Hopes: The Banker; Absolutism Attacked: The Adventures of M. Guillaume, Sovereignty Redefined: The Challenge of the Parlements, Noblesse Oblige?; The Cultural Construction of a Citizen: Collecting an Audience, Casting Roles: Children of Nature, Projecting the Voice: The Echo of Antiquity, Spreading the Word; The Costs of Modernity: How New Was the Old Regime?, Visions of the Future; Expectations; Body Politics: Uterine Furies & Dynastic Obstructions, Calonne's Portrait, Notable Exceptions; Suicides, 1787-88: The Revolution Next Door, The Last Government of the Old Regime, The Swan Song of the Parlements, The Day of Tiles, End Games; Grievances, Autumn 1788-Spring 1789: 1788, Not 1688, The Great Divide, August-December 1788, Hunger & Anger, Dead Rabbits, Torn Wallpaper; March-April 1789; Improvising a Nation: Two Kinds of Patriot, Novus Rerum Nascitur Ordo, May-June 1789, Tableaux Vivants, June 1789; Bastille, July 1789: Two Kinds of Palace, Spectacles: The Battle for Paris, July 12-13, 1789, Buried Alive? Myths & Realities in the Bastille, The Man Who Loved Rats, The 14th of July 1789, The Afterlife of the Bastille: Patriote Palloy & the New Gospel, Paris, King of the French; Choices; Reason & Unreason, July-November 1789: Phantoms, July-August, Powers of Persuasion, July-September, The Quarrel of Women, October 5-6; Acts of Faith, October 1789-July 1790: Living History, Apostasy, Acting Citizens, Sacred Spaces; Departures, August 1790-July 1791: Magnitudes of Change, The Incontinence of Polemics, Mirabeau Pays His Debts, Rites of Passage; Marseillaise, September 1791-August 1792: Finished Business?, Crusaders, Marseillaise; Impure Blood, August 1792-January 1793: A Holocaust for Liberty, Goethe at Valmy, One Cannot Reign Innocently, Trial, Two Deaths; Virtue & Death: Enemies of the People? Winter-Spring 1793: Straitened Circumstances, Sacred Hearts: The Rising in the Vendee, Paltry Merchandise, March-June, Saturn & His Children; Terror is the Order of the Day: June 1793-Frimaire An II (12/1793), Blood of the Martyr, Terror is the Order of the Day, Obliterations; The Politics of Terpitude: She-Wolves & Other Dangers, The End of Indulgence; Chiliasm, April-July 1794: Death of a Family, The School of Virtue, Thermidor; Epilogue; Reunions; Sources & Bibliography; Index; Photographic Credits