18th
A01=Keith Michael Baker
Ancien
Assassination
Author_Keith Michael Baker
Baker
Bastille
Biography
Category=DNBH
Category=NHD
Category=NHTR
Category=NHTV
century
Convention
Corday
Danton
Democracy
eightenth
Enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Execution
France
Girondins
Guillotine
Historian
i peuple
Jacobin
Journalism
Journalist
L'Am
Monarchy
Montagnard
National
Pamphleteer
Paris
Politics
Propaganda
Radical
Radicalization
Regime
Republicanism
Revolution
Rhetoric
Robespierre
Sans-culottes
Scientist
Swiss
Terror
Uprising
Violence
Writer
Product details
- ISBN 9780226820927
- Weight: 1306g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 18 Nov 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A landmark biography of one of the most notorious and controversial protagonists of the French Revolution—Jean-Paul Marat.
Who better to pen an authoritative biography of Jean-Paul Marat (1743–93) than preeminent historian of France Keith Michael Baker? Decades in the making, this monumental work takes readers on a journey through the intriguing, sometimes shocking life of this writer and thinker.
Starting with Marat’s Swiss family and upbringing, Baker then sheds light on his early years in England, his career as an aspiring scientist in Paris, his gradual transformation from impassioned pamphleteer to revolutionary newspaperman, and, finally, his murder and martyrdom. Throughout, Baker offers readers the unique opportunity to reconsider the outbreak and development of the French Revolution through Marat’s eyes and in his own words. To help make sense of Marat’s trajectory, he shows how his violent and incendiary public calls to render unseen forces visible, to inject immediacy into an increasingly abstract modern world, would transform classical republicanism into the language of Terror.
Far beyond a standard rendering of Marat’s life and its milestones, this biography offers readers an opportunity to see the French Revolution as never before, through the perspective of one of its major figures. Baker’s book reveals how someone like Marat could go from translating Newton and engaging with Franklin to calling for an ever-growing number of heads to roll—a transformation as chilling as ever.
Who better to pen an authoritative biography of Jean-Paul Marat (1743–93) than preeminent historian of France Keith Michael Baker? Decades in the making, this monumental work takes readers on a journey through the intriguing, sometimes shocking life of this writer and thinker.
Starting with Marat’s Swiss family and upbringing, Baker then sheds light on his early years in England, his career as an aspiring scientist in Paris, his gradual transformation from impassioned pamphleteer to revolutionary newspaperman, and, finally, his murder and martyrdom. Throughout, Baker offers readers the unique opportunity to reconsider the outbreak and development of the French Revolution through Marat’s eyes and in his own words. To help make sense of Marat’s trajectory, he shows how his violent and incendiary public calls to render unseen forces visible, to inject immediacy into an increasingly abstract modern world, would transform classical republicanism into the language of Terror.
Far beyond a standard rendering of Marat’s life and its milestones, this biography offers readers an opportunity to see the French Revolution as never before, through the perspective of one of its major figures. Baker’s book reveals how someone like Marat could go from translating Newton and engaging with Franklin to calling for an ever-growing number of heads to roll—a transformation as chilling as ever.
Keith Michael Baker is the J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities, professor of history, and professor (by courtesy) of French and Italian, emeritus, at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of several books on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
