*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.

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Join us as Dr. Jeremy D. Popkin presents his latest book, A New World Begins: the History of the French Revolution

The French Revolution was the “big bang” out of which all modern political and social conflicts emerged. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin puts readers in the thick of the debates and the turmoil that led to the overthrow of the centuries-old French monarchy and the establishment of the world’s first modern democratic republic. Popkin’s dramatic narrative includes both the familiar leaders of the movement—Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre—and the women and enslaved blacks who voiced demands for rights for themselves. Popkin also explains why figures from Marie-Antoinette to humble peasants in the French countryside opposed a movement whose principles are so closely tied to the democratic values of today.  

Jeremy D. Popkin holds the William T. Bryan Chair of History at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the author of over 20 books, including You Are All Free: the Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery and History of Modern France. He remembers reading the American Library in Paris’s copy of Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose when his family spent a year in Paris in 1952.