Steven Laurence Kaplan reconstructs and analyzes the loud and bitter arguments over the meaning of the French Revolution which have consumed French intellectuals in recent years. Kaplan recounts the contemporary debates over the meaning of the Revolution, tracing the impact of the historians' bitter quarrel, from Parisian academic circles to the public arenas of the bicentennial celebration. He considers the roles played in those arguments by three of France's most influential historians: François Furet, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel Vovelle.

In 1993, Editions Fayard published Steven Laurence Kaplan's controversial history of the bicentennial commemoration of the French Revolution. Here available in English is one of the most polemical parts of that work, Kaplan's account of the contemporary debates over the meaning of the Revolution. Farewell, Revolution: The Historians' Feud, France, 1789/1989 traces the impact of the historians' bitter quarrel, from Parisian academic circles to the public arenas of the bicentennial celebration.

Kaplan considers in intimate detail the roles played in those arguments by three of France's most influential historians: François Furet, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel Vovelle. As he reenacts the feud, Kaplan invites a reassessment of the relationship between the writing of history and the practice of politics. His book suggests that the charged relationship between history and politics that enlivened the bicentennial may be the Revolution's most enduring legacy.

Steven Laurence Kaplan is Goldwin Smith Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of the complementary work, Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989, also from Cornell.

Kaplan's analysis of the tactics of the far right... is authoritative and convincing. Impressive also is the understanding shown for President François Mitterand, who sought to preserve the integrity of the Revolution while jettisoning the totalitarian extremes.... Kaplan does a first-rate job of distilling the interpretation of François Furet, the "unwitting midwife" of a reactionary zeal that impregnated the best-known of the historians present.... The book fills an important gap.

An excellent two-volume study of France's bicentennial commemoration of its most famous revolution.... A remarkable, comprehensive account.