“Anyone interested in digging deeper into some of the less-examined facets of late imperial and early Soviet Russia will be well rewarded.” —American Historical Review Nikolai Charushin’s memoirs of his experience as a member of the revolutionary populist movement in Russia are familiar to historians, but A Generation of Revolutionaries provides a broader and more engaging look at the lives and relationships beyond these memoirs. It shows how, after years of incarceration, Charushin and friends thrived in Siberian exile, raising children and contributing to science and culture there. While Charushin’s memoirs end with his return to European Russia, this sweeping biography follows this group as they engaged in Russia’s fin de siècle society, took part in the 1917 revolution, and struggled in its aftermath. A Generation of Revolutionaries provides vibrant and deeply personal insights into the turbulent history of Russia from the Great Reforms to the era of Stalinism and beyond. In doing so, it tells the story of a remarkable circle of friends whose lives balanced love, family, and career with exile, imprisonment, and revolution.

Details the experiences of the first generation of Americans who inherited the independent country, discussing the lives, businesses, and religious freedoms that transformed the country in its early years.

“[A] wide-ranging and nuanced group portrait of the Founding Fathers” by a Pulitzer Prize winner (The New Yorker). In the early 1770s, the men who invented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, devoted to family and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to become “revolutionary.” But when events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust into a crisis that moved quickly from protest to war. In Revolutionaries, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers—how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation. We see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as ordinary men who became extraordinary, altered by history. “[An] eminently readable account of the men who led the Revolution, wrote the Constitution and persuaded the citizens of the thirteen original states to adopt it.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Superb . . . a distinctive, fresh retelling of this epochal tale . . . Men like John Dickinson, George Mason, and Henry and John Laurens, rarely leading characters in similar works, put in strong appearances here. But the focus is on the big five: Washington, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton. Everyone interested in the founding of the U.S. will want to read this book.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the activist and Sundance Award-winning filmmaker of Fuel and Kiss the Ground comes an ambitious book showcasing the captivating stories of Millennial change-makers in order to empower and motivate today’s young adults to rise up to their potential for greatness. With eye-opening research and inspiring interviews, The Revolution Generation is the first in-depth exploration of the world-changing activism and potential of people born between 1980 and 2000. Labeled Generation Y or Millennials, theirs is the first digitally fluent generation. From sex and dating, to parental relationships, to jobs and the economy, Millennials live within a dynamic interplay of technological advances and real world setbacks. Their connectivity and global awareness have created astonishing new opportunities, but have also come at a time of peril. According to the United Nations, today’s youth face the ten largest global crises in human history (including the sixth major species extinction, a rapidly changing climate, and a worldwide refugee crisis). In no uncertain terms, the future of humanity rests on their shoulders. While these challenges may be daunting, Millennials are part of the largest, most educated, most digitally plugged-in generation to date and The Revolution Generation elucidates their often-overlooked strengths and shows how they can build a brighter, more sustainable and democratic future for themselves—and all of humanity. The Revolution Generation is also soon to be a full-length documentary featuring Bernie Sanders, Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, and more.

Originally published in 1986. Martin A. Miller, author of the definitive biography of the exiled revolutionary Peter Kropotkin, traces the history of the first generations of Russians who went to Western Europe to devote their lives to anti-tsarist politics. Refusing to assimilate abroad and unable to return home, the émigrés political orientations were influenced by intellectual and social currents in both Russia and Europe. Miller undertakes a major reassessment of the émigré contribution to the Russian revolutionary movement. Starting with Nikolai Turgenev, who in 1825 was declared the first "émigré" by a special act of the Russian government, the exiles formed a unique social and political group. Miller takes a biographical approach in tracing the progression from a disparate community of intellectuals, unable to act together to promote their own program for change, to a more cohesive second émigré generation that provided the foundation for collective action and the development of a revolutionary ideology. The creation of the Russian émigré press, Miller argues, gave identity and momentum to the émigrés and helped promote their program of revolution and a new social order. The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870 concludes with the death in 1870 of the leading émigré figure, Alexander Herzen, and with an analysis of the impact upon the émigrés of the emergence of the populist revolutionary movement within Russia. The émigrés overcame the loss of their homeland through their version of a future Russia, one transformed into a new society where their ideals could be realized. When, two generations later, Lenin returned to Russia after decades in Europe and made this vision a reality, his actions built on the foundation laid by his nineteenth-century predecessors.

When members of the founding generation protested against British authority, debated separation, and then ratified the Constitution, they formed the American political character we know today-raucous, intemperate, and often mean-spirited. Revolutionary Dissent brings alive a world of colorful and stormy protests that included effigies, pamphlets, songs, sermons, cartoons, letters and liberty trees. Solomon explores through a series of chronological narratives how Americans of the Revolutionary period employed robust speech against the British and against each other. Uninhibited dissent provided a distinctly American meaning to the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and press at a time when the legal doctrine inherited from England allowed prosecutions of those who criticized government. Solomon discovers the wellspring in our revolutionary past for today's satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, and protests like flag burning and street demonstrations. From the inflammatory engravings of Paul Revere, the political theater of Alexander McDougall, the liberty tree protests of Ebenezer McIntosh and the oratory of Patrick Henry, Solomon shares the stories of the dissenters who created the American idea of the liberty of thought. This is truly a revelatory work on the history of free expression in America.

"The Last Revolutionaries" tells a story of unwavering political devotion: it follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Before 1945, German communists were political outcasts in the Weimar Republic and courageous resisters in Nazi Germany; they also suffered Stalin's Great Purges and struggled through emigration in countries hostile to communism. After World War II, they became leaders of East Germany, where they ran a dictatorial regime until they were swept out of power by the people's revolution of 1989. In a compelling collective biography, Catherine Epstein conveys the hopes, fears, dreams, and disappointments of a generation that lived their political commitment. Focusing on eight individuals, "The Last Revolutionaries" shows how political ideology drove people's lives. Some of these communists, including the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, enjoyed great personal success. But others, including the purge victims Franz Dahlem and Karl Schirdewan, experienced devastating losses. And, as the book demonstrates, female and Jewish communists faced their own sets of difficulties in the movement to which they had given their all. Drawing on previously inaccessible sources as well as extensive personal interviews, Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists. In the service of their party, these communists experienced solidarity and betrayal, power and persecution, sacrifice and reward, triumph and defeat. At once sordid and poignant, theirs is the story of European communism--from the heroic excitement of its youth, to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of its middle age, to the sorry debacle of its death.