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nick_jenkins's review
5.0
This book has a narrow but significant purpose: to elucidate both the manifest content of perhaps the most influential pamphlet of the French Revolution and also the latent or hidden ambivalences which to some degree represent the unresolved tensions of not only bourgeois revolutions, but the revolutionary tradition stemming from 1789 as a whole. I think Sewell executes his task marvelously well, but this book should not serve as an introduction to the French Revolution. Given the relative obscurity of Sieyes next to the more notorious Jacobins, it is unlikely that a novice will seek it out, of course. If you have been intrigued by Sieyes or by the question of how bourgeois the French Revolution really was, on the other hand, you will find this a rich and stimulating study.
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