/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22016721]

best books for learning about the french revolution/napoleonic france?

[Anonymous No.22016729]

>>22016721
Considerations on France (Joesph de Maistre)
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Edmund Burke)

[Anonymous No.22016750]

Peter McPhee seems pretty good in general. So far I’ve only read Robesperre: A Revolutionary Life but am enjoying thoroughly.

De Toqueville‘s study is excellently researched and worth reading despite some of his goofier philosophic analysis.

[Anonymous No.22016773]

>>22016729
>enemies of the revolution
>one of them’s a bong
>both out of date
How about no

Just stick with Georges Lefebvrem OP

[Anonymous No.22016777]

>>22016773
>Lefebvrem
I wrote lefebvre

[Anonymous No.22016778]

>>22016721
Read in this order:
>The Days of the French Revolution (Hibbert)
>Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke)
>The Age of Napoleon (Herold)

[Anonymous No.22016824]

>>22016721
>french revolution
carlyle

stop recommending burke you dweebs

[Anonymous No.22018230]

>>22016773
>out of date

Yes goyim, make sure you read the most up to date kosher (((edition))) to get the REAL facts

[Anonymous No.22018257]

bros, consider this a warning

if you are easily impressionable and co-dependent on other people, do NOT read about napoleon's life. it will destroy you mentally. you will lay in bed at night with eyes wide open, unable to sleep because you can't comprehend how napoleon was able to have unlimited energy.
he only slept for 4 hours a night , had phenomenal memory and functioned at 100% capacity every single day for over 25 years straight.

don't try to compare yourself to him. your self-esteem will drop faster than a bullet. you will only hurt yourself, as i have already done

[Anonymous No.22018322]

just steer clear of seething angloids and you'll be good

[Anonymous No.22018329]

>>22018257
Guy was a true main character of history, and it's easy to think your own life is sad, insignificant and meaningless in comparison.

[Anonymous No.22018360]

>>22018322
YOU LOST
GET OVER IT

[Anonymous No.22018368]

>>22018257
That's a sobering thought. I AM impressionable and co-dependant. My father suggests me to read the biographies of great men. I had my eye on Napoleon's.. I suppose i am better off not getting spirit-broken.

[Anonymous No.22018375]

Andrew Roberts has a very readable Nappie bio.

[Anonymous No.22018390]

>>22018257
Yes but it’s too late for me. I read about his life at the same age he won Morengo

[Anonymous No.22018397]

Thing that strikes me when reading about the supermen of the past is how young they were when they were thrust out into the world and expected to just get their shit together. Take Napoleon, who had to leave home at like age 9 to travel from Corsica to France, so he could learn the language before military school. Today we live like children with our parents untill we are in our mid twenties very often.

[Anonymous No.22018442]

French Revolution by Carlyle,

[Anonymous No.22018473]

>>22016721
I can second the recommendations of Lefebvre's two volumes on the revolution. I would recommend Campaigns of Napoleon by Chandler

[Anonymous No.22018604]

>>22016721
No such thing. You can't learn history from books. You were either there or you weren't. Everything you "learn" is an illusion.

[Anonymous No.22018610]

>>22018604
What if I wasn't there?

[Anonymous No.22018613]

>>22018604
I was there. I saw it. Reincarnation

[Anonymous No.22018647]

>>22018397
Hitler was an almost-blind unknown soldier in a military hospital who cried upon the news of German surrender at the age of 29

[Anonymous No.22018651]

>>22018610
Then you'll never know.

[Anonymous No.22018689]

>>22018257
>men of action need less sleep than men of contemplation. napoleon was always ready, even at 2am. schopenhauer considered a whole day lost if he didn't get enough sleep the night before.
t. jünger

[Anonymous No.22018709]

>>22016721
Don't know if you can find it in english but "Les Trois Premières Années de la Révolution à Bar-le-Duc" by Braudel is great like everything Braudel.

[Anonymous No.22018860]

>>22018651
Sounds like complete bullshit

[Anonymous No.22018956]

>>22018257
>2 years until he overthrew the government at my age
Quick, gang! Get me to the self help section!

[Anonymous No.22019503]

>>22018257
Even he himself said many times that some of his sucesses seemed supernatural. I think Spengler would call him a "man of Destiny". But yeah supergenius IQ + sensibility of a wizard + sheer fucking will

[Anonymous No.22020007]

>>22016721
Balzac's La Comédie humaine

[Anonymous No.22020083]

>>22018689
jesus christ how depressing

[Anonymous No.22020153]

>>22016750
Second Tocqueville is a good basic intro to the possible contributing causes that primed the revolution. However he doesn’t really give the story of what happened and what it all means. Plus he has goofy ideas about religion from being an 19th century lib. Honestly I personally have never found any definitive answers about the French Revolution or Napoleon that I find totally satisfactory. It’s a very complex event with many ways to look at it. In brief I think the Revolution was primed by the various failures of the ancien regime over the previous century, the dual Enlightenments, and the general historical process as outlined by Spengler. It was violent and unstable do to the philosophy of “the general will” that legitimated popular violence, the constant paranoia and betrayal, fears of famine and the Wars. In the end it was unworkable and unworkable and lead to the directory and then Napoleon. Its significance was the destruction of much of the feudal legal and the birth of a new type of nationalism. It served as a mythological event in the French and broader European consciousness as for overthrowing the old order and the possibility of building a better world based on reason and equality. I don’t really believe such a world is possible but it’s a powerful symbol nonetheless. Book semi related but not really.

[Anonymous No.22020878]

>>22018368
you can still read about his life but if even the idea of comparing yourself to him begins to take form within your mind, check that thought and stop it immediately
you can't compare yourself to historical greats like him and feel good afterwards, you just can't. so don't do it

[Anonymous No.22021560]

>>22018257
literally and fucking unironically me until long covid mentally crippled me
now I'm a depressive wreck with bad sleep and shit memory

[Anonymous No.22022910]

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism by Barruel.