Jean-Paul Marat’s role in the French Revolution has long been a matter of controversy among historians. Often he has been portrayed as a violent, sociopathic demagogue. This biography challenges that interpretation and argues that without Marat’s contributions as an agitator, tactician, and strategist, the pivotal social transformation that the Revolution accomplished might well not have occurred.

Clifford D. Conner argues that what was unique about Marat - which set him apart from all other major figures of the Revolution, including Danton and Robespierre - was his total identification with the struggle of the propertyless classes for social equality.

This is an essential book for anyone interested in the history of the revolutionary period and the personalities that led it.

Clifford D. Conner is on the faculty of the School of Professional Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he teaches history. He has written biographies of two eighteenth-century Irish revolutionaries, Colonel Despard (2000) and Arthur O’Connor (2009). He is also the author of the acclaimed A People’s History of Science (2005) and is on the editorial board of The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.