The Great Upheaval, Jay Winik
The Great Upheaval, Jay Winik
List: $21.99 | Sale: $15.39
Club: $10.99

The Great Upheaval

Author: Jay Winik

Narrator: Sam Tsoutsouvas

Abridged: 12 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/11/2007


Synopsis

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into monumental revolution. But none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation. In The Great Upheaval, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization.Winik brings his vast, meticulous research and narrative genius to the cold, dark battlefields and deadly clashes of ideologies that defined this age. Here is a savage world war, the toppling of a great dynasty, and an America struggling to survive at home and abroad. Here, too, is the first modern Holy War between Islam and a resurgent Christian empire. And here is the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage: Washington and Jefferson, Louis XVI and Robespierre, Catherine the Great, Adams, Napoleon, and Selim III. Exquisitely written and utterly compelling, The Great Upheaval vividly depicts an arc of revolutionary fervor stretching from Philadelphia and Paris to St. Petersburg and Cairo—with fateful results. A landmark in historical literature, Winik's gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world.

About Jay Winik

Jay Winik is the author of the New York Times bestseller April 1865. He is a senior scholar of history and public policy at the University of Maryland and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joe on September 03, 2018

The Great Upheaval is nothing if not ambitious. In this author's previous book, April 1865, the topic was extremely focused both in timeline and subject matter. Not so in The Great Upheaval. Technically it covers the years 1788-1800 and a majority of the civilized world at that time, attempting to l......more

Goodreads review by Kim on September 04, 2017

It's a general misconception even among Americans that we kicked the British out of our country and then things were generally calm until the Civil War. The end of the war was just the start of an ongoing internal conflict that wasn't free of bloodshed and reflected the kind of angry partisanship wh......more

Goodreads review by Ari on December 27, 2008

I had high hopes for this book. Jay Winik is a good stylist, with a knack for focusing on underappreciated nuances in the historical record. This book, unfortunately, was a bit of a disappointment. The premise is a good one: to look holistically at US and European history in the period from 1788 to......more

Goodreads review by Tracie on June 01, 2012

This book was fascinating! After reading Les Miserables I was so disappointed that I did not know more about French history, especially the time period of the French Revolution and then into Napoleon. I knew the French Revolution was bad... who doesn't? But I did not realize how bad. The author at o......more

Goodreads review by Maxwell on July 09, 2024

Whenever I'm reviewing a history book like this one, I struggle greatly to come up with a rating for the book. On the one hand, this is an insane achievement that took over 6 years and an endless amount of research all to provide a Game-of-Thrones-esque overview of one of the most interesting time p......more