PositiveThe Wall Street Journal...a fresh and fair-minded account of the revolution overflowing with vivid narrative detail and clear exposition. Above all, Mr. Popkin stresses the critical role that the common people of France played (both for better and for worse) in the revolutionary drama ... It is a decided strength of A New World Begins that it doesn’t end in 1799 but in 1804, when Napoleon, a onetime supporter of the Jacobins, crowned himself emperor of the French.