Citizens

A Chronicle of the French Revolution

By: Simon Schama

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 36 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change. Schama’s approach, weaving in and out of private and public lives in the fashion of a novel, brings us closer than we have ever been to the harrowing and seductive French Revolution.

Simon Schama is a professor of art history and history at Columbia University and is the author of numerous award-winning books; his history Rough Crossings won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. He has written and presented more than thirty documentaries for the BBC, PBS, and the History Channel.

©1989 Simon Schama (P)1990 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Lively descriptions of major events, colorful cameos of leading characters (and obscure ones too), bring them to life here as no other general work has done…Above all, Mr. Schama tells a story, and he tells it well…A delight to read.” ( New York Times Book Review)

“An immensely readable work of distinguished scholarship that guillotined many of the romantic myths about the beginning of French democracy.” ( Time)

A Must Listen!!

A fascinating and timely listen! Articulate and witty. No one and no thing relevant to the French Revolution is spared Simon Schama's withering perspicacity. Not to be missed!!

Great audiobook!! What's the problem?

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this book in a heartbeat! Other reviewers say they had audio problems with this book -- I didn't hear any problems at all. Audible must have fixed whatever this was. A great long listen!

What does Frederick Davidson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

A good command of French -- thank God! Many other audible product producers (Charles River Editors, are you reading this?) who discuss the French Revolution often mispronounce many of the French names. Not Davidson. He is a total articulate pro!

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A deep broad dive into the French Revolution!

Any additional comments?

If you really want to get into the French Revolution, this is the book for you!!

Fix the audio already!

The skipping ruins what is an otherwise excellent version of the history of the French Revolution

Citizens for a better France.

I have always been curious about the French Revolution causes and ultimate impact. The Book by Simon Schama is an inclusive account of the reasons, steps and full accounting of this violent and brutal event.

Having visited the Chateau Region, one can imagine the void between the rich and the poor. But a description I had heard about the revolution, that it had eaten its own children, was confirmed by the narrative.

As with all history, it has poignant information, shared with the sharpness of a guillotine. Simon Schama is a masterful story teller! I recommend all of his work.

wonderful book, problem performance

This is a great book, wonderfully written, lively and intelligent. My review however is a plea to Frederick Davidson. Obviously Audible loves him, so I hope this can reach him somehow. This reader would make the Sermon on the Mountain sound like a sneering, scoffing insult. "And blessed be the humble and the meek... yeah, right..." A reader should be a transparent vessel for the book, not an interpreter, and a misplaced interpreter at that. And what about the falsetto voice whenever a woman speaks? What's the matter with men who read women in falsetto? Women are people too! Please stop that, it's offensive and makes them all sound like caricatures! There is no reason on earth to single women out that way -- for the listener is perfectly capable to understand when it's the narrator who speaks and when it's the character. Since there is no significant change of tone and voice when a male character speaks, then I see no need to make a special case for women.
These mannerisms -- the voice dripping with misplaced sarcasm, and the falsetto -- badly mar this book. I know at least one person who had to return it because of that. Couldn't stand to listen to it.
And incidentally, yes, the recording still skips. I am now right in the middle of the book, and the skipping occurred mostly in the first one third. It hasn't skipped for the last three hours or so. But when it does, it's extremely disruptive and crucial information is lost.

a bit arch

Reader a bit arch, better to interpret his mannerisms as camp. otherwise, argument by vinnette.

Worth every minute

A superb history. One wishes for the time and resources to follow almost every character into his/her biography. Does the appalling violence on display still lurk in the bosom of France?
Davidson’s arch and detached style suits the material perfectly. It wouldn’t do to have the narrator break into fits of derisory laughter at the pomposity of so many self-serving “idealists”, nor to succumb to sobs as the unimaginable cruelties unfold.

Well done

While it is true that there are some technical problems with the recording, the benefit of this historical narrative is well worth the minor frustrations in said recording. There are many reasons one should choose this work for their time but one in particular is the comprehensive nature of the work. It allows us to see both the good and the bad and I believe that the author did an excellent job in maintaining a family neutral position and give oboe facts and not conclusions. This title is well worth the listen or read for any person who want to have a more comprehensive grasp of history.

Savage

Schama emphasizes the great personalities involved in the French Revolution: this is the place to go for full portraits of the vacillating but sometimes courageous Louis XVI; for the puritanical Robespierre; the devilish Marat, with his repulsive skin disease; and calculating opportunists like Talleyrand.

It's also the place to go for stomach-churning descriptions of mob violence. I'm writing this in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Paris; and I hesitate to say this because of the timing, but Paris is no stranger to the savage violence of the mob on people perceived as enemies. Once killed by a Paris mob, the victim's body was likely to be torn apart - literally - with parts paraded around the city on the ends of pikes. Heads were being removed as trophies by ordinary people for years before the guillotine made the process systematic.

The king was at Versailles; a mob stormed the palace, killed and beheaded his defenders, and forced him to move to his palace in the city, the Tuilleries, where they could keep an eye on him. Later that palace was stormed by a mob, who killed and beheaded his defenders, and forced him to take refuge elsewhere. Later still, this place of refuge was stormed again, with even worse butchery, and he was tried and condemned to the guillotine.

Schama doesn't focus exclusively on this aspect of the revolution. He gives full play to the political history of the various factions: the Montagnards, the Girondins, the Jacobins; and to the successive waves of political and sometimes physical extermination carried out by one faction against another. The Revolution was self-consciously symbolic and declamatory, and it made for magnificent "scenes" of political debate.

It's a long, fascinating account, whose only fault is that it ends rather abruptly after the death of Robespierre. There's a summing up of what happened to who, but less attention to what - if anything - it all meant. Frederick Davidson gives his usual sterling performance. (Davidson, as I've said many times, is an acquired taste: IF you've acquired the taste, the book is a great pleasure to listen to. He has an unerring instinct for character, given less free rein here than in his readings of fiction, but still in evidence.)

Great introduction, horrible narration

Would you listen to Citizens again? Why?

The United States in the 1980s is probably sufficiently distant from France in the late 1700s to provide a balanced look at the important events of that time and place. This book provides a great overview and lots of context, and Schama never looks away from atrocities committed by either side. Citizens is also obviously a product of the late 1980s in its scepticism towards economic regulations.

What did you like best about this story?

The best part of Citizens is the wealth of context it provides in explaining what made the revolution happen and how French society was affected.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Frederick Davidson?

While Frederick Davidson's tendency to come across as smug and sarcastic is certainly a flaw, his complete inability to pronounce French names and terms is almost enough to be a dealbreaker. His awful pronunciation isn't even consistent. Marat's murderer's name was Charlotte Corday, but Davidson pronounces it Cordaille just as often as Corday. Now, her name is a familiar one, but the problem becomes real when the listener can't tell if Davidson is referring to a man alternately as Beaulieu and Boileau, or if they are indeed two different men.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Since reading (listening to) Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety, Danton's execution has never failed to get me.