Noel Parker is Senior Lecturer in European Politics, in the Department of Linguistic and International Studies at the University of Surrey.

• Acknowledgements. ntroduction: Meanings of Revolution in Time and Space.Part I: How Revolutions Happen:.1. Revolutions in Past History.2. Why Revolutions have Occurred.3. The Trend in Revolutions.4. Revolutions and Modernity in the Twentieth Century.Part II: Why Revolutions Matter: .5. Revolutions and Historical Change: the 'Revolutionary Narrative'.6. The Revolutionary Narrative in History.7. The Revolutionary Narrative at the End of the Twentieth Century.Appendix: Revolutions and the Understanding of History.Notes.References.Index.

'Revolutions and History combines the virtues of two very different kinds of study. It is a lucid, concise and reliable guide through the forest of literature on the subject: an ideal introduction for students. It is also a wide-ranging essay full of original ideas on topics as diverse as world-system theory and the effects of what the author describes as 'the revolutionary narrative'. I don't know of any book which so skilfully combines history with theory in a study of revolution.' Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge '[Covers] the topic from its beginnings in modern European history up to the present. Parker has more in mind than a mere typology. He wishes also to give a structural-analytic explanation of revolutions, along with a hermeneutically inflected history of their appearance over time.' American Historical Review