H-Diplo Review Essay 192 on Lawson. Anatomies of Revolution

Emily Whalen reviews Anatomies of Revolution by George Lawson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)

"There are two main ways" of studying revolution, George Lawson asserts in his new book, "and they are both wrong" (1). Anatomies of Revolution endeavors to forge a third path for the study of revolution, one that relies on a novel "global historical sociology of revolution" (10). With meticulous and occasionally incisive prose, Lawson succeeds in making a thorough case for his typology of revolution. Despite its ambivalent conclusions, Anatomies of Revolution represents a valorous attempt to strike a balance between narrative and theoretical methods....