Fans pick 100 books like Revolutionary Spring

This book is both an attempt to reclaim the legacy of the Paris Commune for our time and a rich and stimulating investigation of the Commune as “a working laboratory of political invention.” The focus is not on the traditional narrative culminating with the slaughter of Bloody Week. It is on the efforts of individuals—some far removed from the Communards’ Paris—to imagine a world marked by the inversion of longstanding hierarchies and divisions.

What makes the book especially compelling is Ross’s ability to “think with” both Communards like Elisabeth Dmitrieff and Elisée Reclus and outsiders like Kropotkin and Marx as they “open up the field of the possible” in reflecting on the Commune.

T.J. Clark treats 1848 as a time when “art and politics could not escape each other,” and he offers a brilliant discussion of the efforts of artists to confront that situation. There are wonderful chapters on Delacroix’s anguished retreat into a private world, Millet’s portrait of the peasantry as a class in dissolution, and Baudelaire as a poet of post-revolutionary despair.

But for me, the most arresting portions of the book focus on Daumier, who was unique in his ability to depict the life of the Paris streets and create the great image of the Bonapartist con-man in the figure of Ratapoil. What I find most telling in these portraits, and the book as a whole, is T.J. Clark’s ability to “put back the doubt into revolution”—to recapture the confusion, the uncertainty, and the sense that everything was at risk.

This is an eye-witness account of the French Revolution of 1848 by a major participant. It offers a fascinating, acerbic picture of the major actors, the revolutionary “days,” and Tocqueville’s unhappy experience as Foreign Minister. It vividly conveys a sense of both the fears of the propertied classes and the limitations of radicals who could only play at revolution, mimicking the roles and gestures of 1789-’94.

But what I find most compelling is Tocqueville’s preoccupation with questions that are central to our understanding of the failures of democratic politics, then and now. How is it that in the space of two generations, democratic revolutions twice culminated in Napoleonic dictatorship? Why do so many democratic governments, including ours, appear to be moving in the same direction now? 

This novel is both the story of an unconsummated love affair and an account of the experience and imaginative life of the generation of young people who came to maturity around 1840 and whose lives were either broken or redirected by the revolution of 1848.

Flaubert takes great care to establish a counterpoint between the collapse of political ideals in 1848 and the collapse of the dreams of the individual characters. But Sentimental Education can also be considered as a work of history that brings the past to life and, in the end, offers a deep and, in some ways, sympathetic picture of the inability of individuals to shape history or their own lives, in a world ruled by elemental forces that elude understanding.

That Night in Paris is the second book in Sandy Barker’s Holiday Romance Series, which is packed with beautifully described holiday destinations and the will-they-won’t-they moments we romance readers love. In That Night in Paris, Cat books an impromptu European coach trip in desperation after she has a few too many wines and sleeps with her flatmate. And what a decision that turns out to be when she bumps into her long-lost teenage crush in Paris.     

Cat’s on my dinner guest list because she’s feisty, fun, and oozes sass, while at the same time having a more vulnerable side that would get the deeper conversations going by dessert. Sometimes strong women who are confident and outspoken (in a good way) can be criticised and labelled negatively, but women like Cat should be applauded for being real. 

This remarkable biography has been hugely important to me in the understanding of the great German writer and critic Walter Benjamin. His essays, particularly on the 19th century Arcades, were the basis of my study, "A Human Comedy, Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th century Paris". Eiland and Jennings biography, based on enormous research, introduce us to this complex and enigmatic character and his brilliant criticism.

They provide a revealing portrait of his brief life in the shadow of European catastrophe. Their consummate understanding of Benjamin’s complex layered work gives new insight into this highly influential thinker. A scholarly work of the first order, written with wisdom and  compassion.

Lizzy Dent’s books nail that winning combination of funny and heartfelt. I loved Lizzy’s debut, The Summer Job, as it’s such a great mix of witty and audacious, but full of warmth too.

This book, her latest, has the same ingredients: an outrageous opening, a luscious romance, and a thorny workplace situation. Her prose is sharp, the jokes keep coming, and her characters are people you want to hang out with. Plus, the revenge really is sweet…

It can be difficult to recall that, while laying waste to the armies of Europe, proving himself to be one of the finest military commanders in history, Napoleon was writing salty love letters home to his wife. Narrated in first-person diary-style by Josephine, Sandra Gulland’s sensational trio of books is a credit to the sometimes-overlooked genre of historical autobiographical fiction. The events around her life with the self-anointed Emperor of the French are defined with both intimacy and sweep. Josephine emerges as a most intriguing woman, charming and clever, and a full participant aside from her husband as he rises and falls.

The three books cover the many phases of her exceptional life. From her childhood in the French colony of Martinique, through her first marriage and imprisonment during the revolution, to her fateful introduction to the “strange little man,” and through their marriage and demise, the woman who became… show more.

Toso Fei is a Venetian author who writes about the quirks and mysteries of Venice. He has several books about ghost stories, strange events, and inventions. All his books are great because he not only writes well but is knowledgeable as only an insider can be.

A funny and moving account of life in occupied Paris by two young sisters, one sensible and studious, the other fun-loving. Written in diary form by each sister in turn, hence the ‘four hands’. Some signs of touching up with hindsight before publication in 1962. There is an English translation, ‘Diary in duo’ (1965) but currently out of print.