Few acts of man as political animal are as complex as a social revolution. The dispute among historians over the nature of the French Revolu¬tion attests to the complexity of that event. Was it Atlantic or national, bourgeois or sans-culotte, a product of poverty or of prosperity, one revolution or several? It is certain that these questions will not be resolved before France celebrates the bicentennial of the Revolution in 1989, and doubtful if they will approach resolution at the tricentennial.The contributions that follow give further proof of this complex¬ity. Two themes alone bind the contributors: the French Revolution as an historical event, and the subtle influence of John Hall Stewart who stimulated the contributors" interest in eighteenth-century France. The varieties of the French Revolution may be seen in the variety of subjects discussed-from the biographical sketch of Albert Mathiez to the intellectual roots of Babeuf s political program, from a cahier of Alsace to the observations of a contemporaneous historian, Francois-Emmanuel Toulongeon.Although the subjects examined differ, the approach to the Revo¬lution by the contributors is a humanistic one. It is the revolutionary who remains the measure of the Revolution. For better or for worse no contributor has adopted a statistical or a purely demographic ap¬proach, nor is there a monolithic point of view either in terms of philosophy or of politics. How pro-Jacobin are the views of the writers? It would be difficult to say. That there are "Robespierrists" among them is probable, but these are balanced, undoubtedly, by "anti-Robespierrists." What interests the essayists, above all, is the reaction of human beings to the Revolution-either as participants in the event, or as historians of it.