From America's fight for independence to the Paris Commune, Adam Zamoyski examines the seismic shift that established our modern world. Offering colorful anecdotes and perceptive commentary, Zamoyski traces how the Enlightenment dislodged Christianity from its central position in the life of European societies, and how man's quest for ecstasy and transcendence flooded into the arts, spawning the Romantic movement. Encompassing the Irish rebellion, the Polish uprisings, and the liberation of South America, this history profiles the revolutionaries, noting their fervor as well as their fallacies.