A rich, learned, and ambitious book.(History of European Ideas) Armenteros marries meticulous scholarship with provocative and original arguments to produce a work that will become required reading for any scholars interested in Joseph de Maistre, counter-revolutionary thought, or nineteenth century philosophies of history.(French History) Carolina Armenteros attempts to demonstrate in this book that Maistre was more... moderate than has been alleged, that he drew on some of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, and that his influence on a variety of approaches to the philosophy of history was enormous, at least until the mid-nineteenth century... this study, a rather old-fashioned history of ideas and of 'great' men, is well worth the attention of a broad range of intellectual, political, cultural, and religious historians.(Canadian Journal of History) Carolina Armenteros has written a superb work on a writer many of us either dismissed or thought we knew well enough already.(European History Quarterly) Carolina Armenteros's innovative and provocative study of Joseph de Maistre goes beyond previous attempts to reclaim the complexity of counterrevolutionary thinking for intellectual history.... Armenteros's close reading of Maistre leaves no doubt that he is closely connected to the key conceptual turn marking postrevolutionary historical thought in Europe.(The Journal of Modern History) The French Idea of History is immensely rich in insights and suggestions... a marvelous piece of original research. What the author has achieved is to enable us to look beyond the Ultramontanist dimension of his thought which has so often led to Maistre being relegated to the sidelines of history, and to see the crucial influences of his work in later historical thinking.(Intellectual History Review) "This book represents the fullest articulation of her own distinctive positionfollowing on from her recent spate of excellent articles.... Anyone interested in studying Maistre on his own terms should start with this excellentlucideruditeand highly original bookbut also bear in mind that the Maistre it reveals would probably have proved unrecognizable to most of his contemporaries"—Francesco Manzini(Modern Language Review) Though Maistre neither practised the craft of history nor produced a comprehensive philosophy of history, he exercised such an influence over early nineteenth-century historical reasoning that echoes of his thought are still felt into our own time. Yet until this work, Maistre's lasting impact has rarely been acknowledged. Carolina Armenteros's book is of critical importance, and should be studied by anyone interested in issues related to the modern Christian appropriations of historical reasoning.(Journal of Ecclesiastical History) With an impressively deep and extensive knowledge of her subject, Armenteros writes in a refreshingly clear and lucid style and her book contains original, thought-provoking interpretations of many of Maistre's most important and controversial works, such as Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg and Du pape. Armenteros has also situated these texts in their historical contexts in ways that are both revealing and often highly insightful.(French Studies) With impressive energy and erudition, Armenteros has overcome... difficulties to recover Maistre's formative role in the articulation of a distinctively French idea of history.(Common Knowledge) One of the strengths of this book is the importance it places on Maistre's intellectual context. Armenteros goes to considerable lengths to describe the intellectual and historical backdrop against which Maistre's ideas emerged and developed. The account she gives is detailed and illuminating. In particular, she should be complimented for the way she shows how Maistre's famous 1819 Du pape (a work he composed when in Saint Petersburg) must be read in the context of religious and political developments in Russia,and the schism between the Eastern churches and Rome.(English Historical Review)
