Books like On revolution by Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt’s classic examination of human activity—labor, work, and action—shows how everyday practice shapes the human condition and serves as a foundation for political freedom.

Francis Fukuyama traces how diverse societies have arrived at their present political arrangements, exploring the historical and comparative routes that shape modern states.

John Rawls’s classic argues that principles of justice, chosen behind a veil of ignorance, would guide free, rational peoples toward equality and fairness in society.

Hannah Arendt’s seminal study charts the rise of totalitarianism from 19th‑century anti‑Semitism and European colonialism to the emergence of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, examining propaganda, terror, and mass mobilization.

On the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921.

A concise anthology of Hannah Arendt’s most influential essays, including excerpts from *The Origins of Totalitarianism*, *The Human Condition* and *Eichmann in Jerusalem*, plus key letters and essays on totalitarianism, the Holocaust, civil rights, and moral philosophy.

An analysis of the Vietnam era panic that eroded American trust in government, linking U.S. political crises to global patterns of violence, civil disobedience, and resistance.

Prolific historian Taylor has written some very good books -- Bismarck, English History, 1914-1945, among others--but now he seems to have stopped trying. Another result of a BBC program--like How Wars Begin--this ""treatment"" of the modern European revolutionary movement (as Taylor grandiosely puts it) contains brief chapters on the French Revolution, the English Chartists, the various revolutions of 1848, the relatively fallow years between 1848 and 1917, and the Russian Revolution. The inclusion of the Chartists--about whom little is generally said in this country--raises the issue of Taylor's ""European"" framework; if the Chartists, why not the English Revolution or the American Revolution, both of which, on the basis of much current scholarship, can be termed important modern revolutions? But even if Taylor had made a serious effort at comprehensiveness, the result would only have been more of what is here; namely, trivia. Shying away from either serious explanation or complicated sentences, Taylor's text is full of inanities like this: ""Engels was a jolly fellow who liked taking a party of revolutionaries into the country for the day and drinking lots of German wine. . . Despite the fact that no new revolutions occured, the revolutionaries often had fun."" Of the leaders of the French Revolution, Taylor notes that they ""all believed in enlightenment. All quoted from the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau."" Even on television, this won't be much of a show.

Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations.