<em>Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution</em> by Simon Schama

I think this book is required reading for anyone interested in the French Revolution, but it should not be the only book they read about it. For one thing, it assumes the reader already knows the timeline of events. Schama basically dismisses all the classic explanations of why the Revolution broke out, like class tensions or economic conditions. In the end he has only Violence, which seems to…