Revolutionary Spring

Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

By: Christopher Clark

Narrated by: Christopher Clark

Length: 33 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

From the bestselling author of The Sleepwalkers comes an epic history of the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe, and the charismatic figures who propelled them forward, with deep resonance and frightening parallels to today.

As history, the uprisings of 1848 have long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848 nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to significant changes that continue to shape our world today. These battles for the future were fought with one eye kept squarely on the past: The men and women of 1848 saw the urgent challenges of their world as shaped profoundly by the past, and saw themselves as inheritors of a revolutionary tradition.

Celebrated Cambridge historian Christopher Clark describes 1848 as “the particle collision chamber at the center of the European nineteenth century,” a moment when political movements and ideas—from socialism and democratic radicalism to liberalism, nationalism, corporatism, and conservatism—were tested and transformed. The insurgents asked questions that sound modern to our ears: What happens when demands for political or economic liberty conflict with demands for social rights? How do we reconcile representative and direct forms of democracy? How is capitalism connected to social inequality? The revolutions of 1848 were short-lived, but their impact on public life and political thought throughout Europe and beyond has been profound.

Elegantly written, meticulously researched, and filled with a cast of charismatic figures, including the social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville and the troubled priest Félicité de Lamennais, who struggled to reconcile his faith with politics, Revolutionary Spring is a new understanding of 1848 that offers chilling parallels to our present moment. “Looking back at the revolutions from the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it is impossible not to be struck by the resonances,” Clark writes. “If a revolution is coming for us, it may look something like 1848.”

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of detailed historic maps, illustrations, portraits, and works of art pertaining to the material.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Christopher Clark (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Refreshingly original . . . it’s fascinating, suspenseful, revelatory, alive. Familiar characters are given vibrancy and previously unknown players emerge from the shadows. Clark’s prose is beautiful but also crystal clear.”—The Times

“Exhilarating, heroic, horrifying and tragic, the events of the mid-19th century in Europe invite a good retelling . . . Christopher Clark’s new book is, arguably, the best to date . . . deeply researched, rich, engaging and though-provoking. There is now no better place to turn for readers who want to immerse themselves in this period and to reflect on how it resonates today.”—Literary Review

“Christopher Clark is that rare thing: a great historian who is also a brilliant storyteller, with a gift for sketching scenes and delineating characters with a few deft brushstrokes. Revolutionary Spring is a beautifully written, richly detailed account of a historical moment that rhymes and resonates, in many strange ways, with our own era of turmoil and disruption.”—Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies and The Great Derangement

A truly amazing history book

Christopher Clark manages to knit a thick, colorful and socially critical tapestry of the events around 1848 that is entertaining to read and highly illuminating also for our time. I only realized at the end that Christopher Clark also read the entire book with such eloquence and feeling for the different languages that all the names of actors, towns and countries are perfectly intoned. Even Swiss Niederurnen is pronounced with a Swiss German accent!!!🙏🙏🙏

Tremendous accomplishment!

Brilliantly read by the author, filled with imagery, irony, and sympathy for (most of) the actors in this Cecil B DeMille production. The text is sometimes witty, often poetic, always clear.

Towards the World as it is Now.

Few authors are also good narrators but when they are, like Christopher Clark it is a treat because you know they are reading the book as it was intended. As a historian myself I have always felt foolish that I had a tenuous grasp of the revolutions of 1848 but I feel a little better now because as Clark says in his conclusion, nobody can fully understand the movement, including himself. That said, I do have a much better understanding and appreciation of this time. In a sense it is the birth of modern politics and constitutional government which has paved the way to evolution rather than revolution towards the democracies of the 20th century.

Good Lord this is an amazing book

Every now and then you find history so well done that you just drop to your knees in awe. This is such a book. It’s long but it never dragged. And it application to today is obvious. And I wish more authors narrated their books. It makes all the difference in the world

Excellent for History Nuts

Meticulously researched and eloquently told. I really enjoyed it. Saying that, I think any person who has just a passing interest in history might find it a bit of a slog. Bill Bryson, Christopher Clark is not, but that’s a shame as I think he might have more interesting things to say.

Like the revolutions, it got off to a good start

The stylistic choice of either to precede each and every quotation in a book full of quotations with "and I quote" was very offputting. It was almost always obvious from context when a quotation was being read. It went from mildly irritating to grating by about halfway through.

As far as the history, if I was not already pretty familiar with the various revolutions of 1848, I think it would have been pretty hard to put together from this book. Telling the story with either some kind of chronological or geographical structure would have made it more coherent.