A New World Begins

Why it’s on the list: Jeremy Popkin’s single-volume narrative of the French Revolution, from the fiscal crisis of the 1780s through the Terror to Napoleon, written by a historian of the revolutionary press — the moment the Enlightenment’s political ideas were actually tried at scale, producing both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Terror in the same decade.

Where I heard about it

• Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, March 2026, closing the Renaissance and Enlightenment Political Thought section just before Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Full list: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the list this came from.