#mike duncan

[st-just]

??!!!?

[nordleuchten]

What do you think the best biography on Lafayette is? I’ve read the ones by Mike Duncan, Laura Auricchio, and Jason Lane (and of course Laf’s own memoirs!). I know of the Harlow Giles Unger one but just haven’t gotten my hands on it.

Dear Anon,

that is a good question, actually. It normally depends on the question that you want to get an answer to. The books by Harlow Giles Unger (Lafayette) and Mike Duncan (The Hero of Two Worlds) are probably the most “general” biographies out there at the moment. Other books put a bit more focus on a specific topic, like La Fayette’s relationship to George Washington and America, his involvement in the French Revolution, his time in prison and exile or his political agenda in the 1820s and 30s.

That aside, my favourite is probably For Liberty and Glory by James R. Gains. That was my third (or so) book on La Fayette and I really enjoyed it and like to pick it up again from time to time. I also liked The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered, the book by Laura Auricchio that you mentioned. Another good one (but only available in German) is General Lafayette in Wittmoldt: ein Leben für die Freiheit by Alfons Galette.

There are many good books about La Fayette and for me personally, in order to stand out, a book needs to have something special, like some new insights or an interesting research focus. But in the end it depends on what you “want” from the book.

I hope you have/had a wonderful day!

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Mike Duncan of the revolutions podcast: I've been writing some punk rock songs about the French Revolution.

Mike Duncan: So if you want to see us live, get vaccinated -

Me:

Imagine telling people to take a government sponsored, endorsed, and protected vaccine, so the government will loosen restrictions, so you can have a punk rock show.

(For extra irony he said this in August 2021, and he said there was a chance the performance would get cancelled, even if it was pushed back to spring 2022.

This has exactly the same vibe as antifa supporting the Canadian government against the trucker protests. They were literally siding with the government trying to force workers to comply for the greater good, and calling the workers who didn't want to do what the state said fascists.

[theoutcastrogue]

[After wrapping up the Revolutions Podcast, Mike Duncan revisited Episode 0 (the Introduction), to see what he got right, what he got wrong etc. And 9 years later, he highlighted one phrase, and reconsidered.]

“...with the show covering a series of distinct time periods that are thematically linked but otherwise wildly disconnected....”

“I no longer believe that. It’s one of the most consequential changes in my historical worldview, from when I started the show in 2013 to where I am now, here at the end of 2022. Now, I knew going into the podcast that there were obviously gonna be links between like the American Revolution and the French Revolution, similar ideas and other connections, crossover characters like Lafayette and Thomas Paine. But once I hit the French Revolution, I realised deep deep in my bones how much I was NOT talking about “distinct time periods that were wildly disconnected”. Quite the opposite. I found everything deeply interconnected and meshed and interrelated. I basically lost all faith in discrete national histories being able to even remotely answer the basic historical question, “what happened”.

It probably started when I realised that there was no way to explain the French Revolution without explaining the Polish Partitions, but then, as I advanced into Haiti and Spanish America, I became fully consumed by the idea that this whole time I’ve just been describing one single revolutionary event playing out in different theatres. That there isn’t an American Revolution and a French Revolution and a Haitian Revolution, but one single Atlantic Revolution. I simply do not believe that things are wildly disconnected any more. I have a fundamentally holistic understanding of history now. But then, advancing though the years as we moved to 1848 and the Paris Commune and Mexico and Russia, the histories and personalities and ideas, they grew, they developed, they shifted and transformed, but there was never a break in continuity.

Everything is connected to everything else. There are no histories. There is only History, one single thing, that never ends.”

— Mike Duncan, Revolutions Podcast | Appendix 1: “Coming Full Circle”

@we-arerevolutionary

[fallowhearth]

I've been listening to the first season of Revolutions, on the English Civil War, and it's striking how often events follow the pattern 'this battle/meeting/parliament could have ended the civil war, except that some aristo did something so mind-numbingly stupid even by the standards of contemporary observers that it actually kicked off a whole additional war.' Many such cases in British history, broadly.

Also somewhat shocking how ahead of their time the Levellers in the New Modern Army were - proposing a package of reforms to suffrage, religious freedom, the legal system etc, in the mid 17th century that would still be radical during the Age of Revolutions nearly 150 years later.

[monkey-rich]

Losing my little autistic history podcast nerd mind! 🚀 👩🏾‍🚀 ✨

[richo1915]

After years of Greek, Roman and Byzantine histories, both in Podcast and Books, I took a step forward in time to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast.

After 6 months of listening to the English, American, French, Spanish ReConquista of South America, Haitian and Mexican Revolutions, I have popped out bleary eyed and squinting into the 20th century’s 1920s.

I still have the Russian Revolution to go (and a few odd Cold War books) but I find myself missing the Ancient World.

[sugarpillremedy]

imagine being immortalized because you trolled too hard

for context caracalla killed his brother named geta, and then denied that he did

[tuungaq]

mike duncan still hasn’t started his new podcast about historical nonfiction books and i miss him something fierce and i’m being SO brave about it

[ms-march]

Ok so I wasn’t expecting mike Duncan to look like that

[nevinslibrary]

Totally Random Non-Fiction Tuesday

Rome has always had a very big place in the minds of those in Europe/Britain (not surprising there, since, it --was-- Europe for quite awhile) and then in the United States. And I will admit that starting as a child with all the cool non-fiction books about the Greek and Roman gods, and continuing until now. Rome has always been this empire that I think I know a ton about, and then I read a book like this one and realize that it was an even more complicated place/time than I thought.

The book starts in 146 BC (or BCE, whichever floats your boat). That was the height of the Roman Empire, and, it was when it had to go from conquering to ruling. Two totally different things (no, I’m not referring to Game of Thrones, you’re referring to Game of Thrones….. *whistles*). It tells the story of 146 to 78 BC, a time that I didn’t know a lot about. The Rise, I’ve definitely read books about that, and the fall, that too, but, this middling part. Ironically, without all the machinations and drama from this middle part, well, I may have had to actually remember the Latin that I learned in high school.

It was a book that I got thoroughly engrossed in. And, he’s a podcaster…. Because, that’s just what my podcast episode queue needs… more podcast episodes…. /s Oops.

You may like this book If you Liked: Rome's Revolution by Richard Alston, The Eternal City by Ferdinand Addis, or Rubicon by Tom Holland

The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan

[st-just]

Kind of re-listening to the Revolutions series on 1848 at background noise and, like, Metternich has to be pretty much the closest history has come to producing the whole 'arch-ideologue philosopher king of the Empire engineering all this shit out of actual principle and not self-interest' archetype I was complaining about a bit back.

'foremost defender of royal absolutism on the continent continually stymied by how useless and incompetent the emperor whose absolute rule he serves is' is admittedly a pretty funny bit, though.

[nordleuchten]

Have you read Mike Duncan's Hero of Two Worlds? if you did, do you recommend it?

Thank you!

Dear Anon,

yes, I did read Mike Duncan’s Hero of Two Worlds and although it has been a few years, I knew that I was quite exited when the book was first released. I am not a Podcast-person, but I had been told that Duncan is quite an excellent history podcaster, and his book was a more recent publication then some other works out there. Duncan covers La Fayette’s life from cradle to grave with a marked focus on the American and French Revolution – as was expected. His writing style is very comprehensible and although the book is around 500-ish pages, it still was an easy and fast read.

As to recommending it, that depends a bit on what you are looking for in a book about La Fayette. As a general overview about the Marquis’ life, I can recommend the book. Harlow Giles Unger’s Lafayette is often cited as the best general biography but while Unger’s book is maybe a tad more detailed, I prefer Duncan’s handling of source material. There were a few little things that made me pause while reading but these were mostly differentiating interpretations.

As I said, it is a very general biography that covers La Fayette’s whole life in one book. If you are looking for an insight into a specific aspect of La Fayette’s life or a very detailed analyzes of his every move, Duncan’s book understandably falls flat.

I remember that I liked the book when reading it, but I was not blown out of the water. There was nothing one had not heard of before and by that time I had read enough about La Fayette to not be surprised by the book. But Duncan proofed that he understood the core of La Fayette’s character.

In short, Hero of Two Worlds is a fine book – especially if you are trying to get an overview of La Fayette’s life and this is maybe one of your first books about him.

I hope that helped and I hope you have/had a wonderful day. Happy reading! :-)

[theoutcastrogue]

The Revolution Devours Its Children

Most of the victims [of reigns of terror] are simply poor anonymous commoners. Peasants, workers, lower class randos who ran afoul of the regime in one way or another, or who simply live in an area that happens to be in a state of acute unrest, and the government decides to order in some infernal columns.

The official tally of the official Reign of Terror is packed with victims from the Vendée for example, whether they were engaged in the uprising or simply picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those who were subject to such summary executions, whether by drowning, hanging, cannon fire, guillotine, or machine gun, their names escape our notice because they were nobodies. For every execution of a famous celebrity historical figure there are hundreds or thousands of executions of unknown commoners.

Partly this can be the result of ratcheting up draconian capital punishment for the simplest of crimes. Lots of victims of the French Reign of Terror were pickpockets and thieves, people who had just broken the law. And if you think about the September Massacres, which were a prelude to the official Reign of Terror, something like half the people who were killed were not aristocrats or enemies of the Revolution at all, but people simply being held for having committed some regular old crime.

— Mike Duncan, Revolutions Podcast Appendix 10: “The Revolution Devours Its Children”

[ofcrime]

Shouting into the void just to ask, if you are also listening to the Revolutions podcast’s new season on the Martian Revolution of 2247 pls lmk

[monkey-rich]

New history podcast drops from Mike Duncan (& Alexis Coe) two weeks in a row 🌡️ too much dopamine please stop 🚑