Citizens by Simon Schama (1989, Hardcover)

Simon Schama always excels when writing a book, by including those extraordinary details that create the feeling that you can almost touch the time period and its participants. Having read three books of his, I recommend him highly as a historian. This book starts far before any French citizen had any awareness of the coming revolution. But Schama includes the events prior to the revolution to show how the writers, philosophers, etc., accelerated the pace toward the actual revolution. Horrific events make one blanche to read the details, but also show how some of the naive ideas evolved into circumstances far beyond what the ideas themselves expressed. For myself, I find that reading such history allows me to evaluate the predictions of politicians, economists, etc., of the day, and compare so that I may more "honestly" understand the unforeseen consequences that may follow.