The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre
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As it changed forever the political landscape of the modern world, the French Revolution was driven by a new type of personality: the confirmed, self-aware revolutionary. Maximilien Robespierre originated the role and embodied its ideological essence and extremes; the self that he projected to the people was equated with the ideals for which he strove. In creating this intellectual biography of so enigmatic a figure, David Jordan has stressed the words of the man about himself. With great imagination and insight, Jordan places Robespierre's self-conceptualization within the context of events and explains how Robespierre "The Incorruptible"—a man seen by contemporaries as virtuous—could not only equate justice with vengeance and demand it of the people, but also stand as its symbol before the world.
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"Jordan provides a fresh and intelligent approach to one of modern history's most controversial figures." —Edward Berenson, Los Angeles Times
"In this absorbing, highly analytical biography, historian David Jordan... portrays a man who was neither bloodthirsty nor personally ambitious, but coldblooded, clearheaded, scrupulous, and utterly dedicated to the cause of revolution: Robespierre the Incorruptible, as he was known in his lifetime.... Jordan's sympathy with his subject is not so much with Robespierre the person as for the abstractions he embodied." —Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor
"David Jordan portrays Robespierre as the quintessential expression of the power of the word in the politics of the French Revolution. A readable and intelligent new biography charged with an interest in the Revolution as a politically and culturally creative event." —Keith Baker, Stanford University
David P. Jordanis a professor and chair of the department of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of The King's Trial: Louis XVI vs. the French Revolution; Gibbon and His Roman Empire;and Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann.
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