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Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism" (U California Press, 2021)
Description: In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire have often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon of anti-racism, a hero to people from Ho Chi Minh to French Jews, Grégoire has been particularly celebrated since 1989, when the French government placed him in the Pantheon as a model of ideals of universalism and human rights. In The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (U California Press, 2021), we gain access for the first time to the full complexity of Grégoire's intellectual and political univer...