1848

In 1848, a violent storm of revolutions ripped through Europe. The torrent all but swept away the conservative order that had kept peace on the continent since Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, but which in many countries had also suppressed dreams of national freedom and parliamentary government. The brick-built authoritarian edifice that had imposed itself on Europeans for almost two generations collapsed when set against the weight of the insurrections. With an astounding rapidity, crowds of working class radicals and middle class liberals in Paris, Milan, Venice, Naples, Palermo, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Munich and Berlin toppled the old regimes and began the task of forging a new order. Political events so dramatic had not been seen in Europe since the French Revolution of 1789 and would not be witnessed again until the revolutions of Eastern and Central Europe in 1989. This vivid and enlightening book traces the roots of the revolutions and then, with breathtaking pace, describes how it was that these explosions of violence spread across Europe, and explains how their effects are still with us today.

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.