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David A. Bell
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David A. Bell teaches history at Princeton and is the author, most recently, with Anthony Grafton, of The West: A New History.
August 29, 2018
A new biography claims his vision was a stabilizing synthesis of France’s monarchical and republican political traditions. But was it?
March 7, 2018
The genre that Pinker’s latest book most closely resembles is not 18th-century philosophie but a TED Talk.
January 25, 2018
To understand the American and French revolutions, one must look not simply at their origins in the wider world but also at how particular environments could become crucibles of intense and rapid political change.
The resentments that led a third of the electorate to vote for Le Pen are not going to disappear anytime soon.
The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.
April 4, 2017
If you want to understand the wave of right-wing populism erupting in Europe and the United States, France is a good place to start.
What the conservative media machine does is much more dangerous.
A new biography explores the mysterious life and times of Toussaint Louverture.
Has the EU followed a path first blazed by Napoleon?
The Unfree French looks at the German occupation of Vichy; Bad Faith is a grim biography of a French collaborator.
New biographies of Rousseau and Voltaire help us appreciate how
very fragile the eighteenth century's great movement of ideas was, and how remarkable it is that the Enlightenment not only survived but flourished.
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