The revolutionary career of Maximilien Robespierre

In changing 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, inspiring such devoted twentieth-century disciples as Lenin. Although he dominated the Committee for Public Safety -- the executive arm of the revolutionary government -- only during the last year of his life, Robespierre was the Revolution in flesh and blood. He embodied its ideological essence, its unprecedented extremes, its absolutist virtues and vices; he incarnated a new, completely politicized self to lead a new, wholly regenerated society. [Book jacket].

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.