Revolutionary Change - 2nd Edition by Chalmers Johnson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A classic study by a leading theorist of revolution, Revolutionary Change has gone through eleven printings since its appearance in 1966 and been translated into German, French, and Korean. This carefully revised edition not only brings the original analysis up to date but adds two entirely new chapters: one on terrorism, the most celebrated form of political violence throughout the 1970s, and one on theories of revolution from Brinton to the present day.

Review Quotes

"A penetrating, illuminating, and gratifyingly concise attempt to bring some order out of chaos. . . . This is one of the handful of books published each year that should be read by every person concerned with man's social and political behavior. . . . The book is as much indebted to current thought in anthropology, economics, sociology, and social psychology as to that in political science and its reliance upon the insights of classical political philosophers such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau is also profound and explicitly stated. It is in his ability to combine meaningfully a large number of divergent theories and philosophies and to direct them toward the explanation of a particular phenomenon that Johnson is especially successful."
--Charles F. MacCormack
, Journal of International Affairs


"Of the definitions [of revolution] available, the most useful appears to be the one adopted by Chalmers Johnson. . . . Johnson's formulation seems reasonably exact and appropriate to all or most varieties of revolution, whatever their differences in aim, scale, or social character."
--Perez Zagorin
, Political Science Quarterly