Customer Reviews

Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light

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I am surprised that there aren't more books out there tying together the American and French Revolutions. I read this book as part of the Brother's Book Club (BBC) and thoroughly enjoyed the e-mail discussions it generated. If you are looking for a chronological historical breakdown of the two revolutions, this would not be the book to get. If, however, an analytical breakdown of the causes that generated and fueled the two revolutions, the thought that kept them aloft, the intellectual connection and differences between the revolutions, and lastly the impact that they had upon the rest of the world; all sound compelling to you, then by all means go buy this book.

One detractor is Dunn's oversimplification in her critical look at everything involving the French Revolution and high praise for all things American Revolution. She follows this code, almost without exception. A more objective analysis would have been more meaningful and valid. The strength of the book is Dunn's revelation of the power of ideas. She makes it inducingly clear that the historically decisive actions of the world were driven by the power of ideas.

Perhaps the most compelling chapters come at the end, as Dunn stretches intellectually by portraying the two revolutions as models and exploring the effect they have had on subsequent revolutions around the globe. The biggest surprise is that after Dunn praises the American model, she concludes by finding America's current system of government inefficient and suggests that the British Parliamentary model is the best fitting for modern day democracies. How we come full circle.

Good book for those interested in the thought process behind the American and French revolution, but not so much for a historical breakdown of the two. Through exploring the power of ideas, Dunn comes up with some powerful ideas of her own.

This is an innovative book that compares the French and American Revolutions, in both their successes and shortcomings, as well as their influences on modern Revolutions. The American Revolution had always seemed like dead, textbook history to me until I read 'Sister Revolutions.' It brought both movements to life, and theorized on how the best of each could be combined for a successful modern Revolution. Definitely a book worth reading!

Author Dunn explores the French and American Revolutions of the late 18th century. She does an excellent job of describing the differences between the two political systems, one based on concensus but with a loyal opposition (American) and one based on total unity (French). The most interesting idea developed is that the French Revolution served as a harbinger of the Russian Revolution. The will of the people would be served by an elite few who remained convinced of their leadership even when deserted by the people they served. The French leaders are portrayed as idealist who tried to create an impossible system while the American leaders were politicians who knew that to create a workable system, some ideas had to be sacrificed.

I would strongly recommend this book to any reader with an interest in history. Well written and well researched, the author ends the book with two chapters about the revolutions in Russia and Vietnam and how these revolutions borrowed ideas from the French and American revolutions.

It's not possible to seriously study the American Revolution without having a knowledge of the French Revolution, as well. Both having been in the name of "the people", why did one work so well, giving us the world's oldest operating constitution, while the other descended into a chaotic, paranoid killing spree?

The short answer is that the French committed the classical blunder of "people's movements" : stirring unbridled emotion in with the idea that the people reign supreme, this is the people's government, so question it and you're against the people.....now prepare to have your height reduced by a foot or so. As an example, the Declaration of the Rights of Man states such laughably contradictory statements of "rights" that it's hard to imagine anyone ever thought it could work in the first place: from Article 4 "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else;" I guess it would be insulting you to draw the line from freedom to tyranny when you're using statements that fatuous as your guiding light. It's kind of like describing your political ideology as "being for good things and against bad things". That's a bit open-ended, don't you think?

History shows hoards of people running like lemmings into the arms of movements that do this again and again at the urging of intellectuals who, in the attempt to reconcile theory with practical solutions, fail miserably and leave an atrocious body-count in their wake. By now, you'd think this dismal little scenario, playing itself like an endless loop of a bad horror film, would recede into history but that just doesn't seem to be the case. After being beaten down by some megalomaniacal ruler, the "people" tend to make the classical over-step of tearing everything to ground level in an effort to scrub themselves clean of the past. What's usually left is a barren wasteland that's as bad or worse than the original offense.

To put it very briefly, the American Revolution differed in that it didn't discard every last remnant of Britain, keeping the best while discarding the worst.

This is an excellent effort, although I think it steps beyond its limits in the final chapters as the author understandably attempts to integrate the lessons from both revolutions to the present. This seems to brief to be of much value and probably should have been the subject of another book.

Having read quite a bit about both the French and American Revolutions, I found this book to be a wonderfully written comparison of both the ideology underlying the movements and the continuing consequences of those ideologies. This is a very meaningful book, both for students of the two revolutions, as well as for people interested in political science and government in general. Not only does it do an excellent job of distilling the movements, but it is extremely well written.

The Sister Revolutions by Susan Dunn is an outstanding comparison of the whys and wherefores of both revolutions. It delves into the readiness of each nation to create, implement and preserve the democratic process. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know why America succeeded in its great experiment.

INCREDIBLE BOOK!! I strongly recommend it for students of comparative history. The US War of Independence earned freedom fot the 13 colonies and created a new nation; the French Revolution descended into a reign of terror. WHY??? Read the book, put it aside, and read it again. What an insight AND inside view of the events!!!! WHO said women could not write military history? or analyze its scientific angle?? Not me!! Bravo, Ms. Dunn.

The author completely disregards many important factors that contributed to the divergent paths of the French Revolution and the American Revolution. If you have read J.M. Thompson's The French Revolution, you know that France had fundamental differences from America in the latter half of the 18th Century. Also, Dunn ignores the fact that the leaders of the American Revolution merely glossed over one very crucial issue when defining the new nation - Slavery. This important issue led to a bloody Civil War less than a century later!