SOURCE: “All's Right with the World,” in Times Literary Supplement, September 6, 1991, p. 12.

In the following review, Johnson offers a positive assessment of The Birth of the Modern.

It has been customary among historians to describe the year 1815 as the year of Restoration, because that is what it appeared to be in France. A Bourbon prince was received at the gates of Paris with the words, “it is but a hundred days since your Highness went away.” The miscalculation of the length of time that Napoleon's escape from Elba had obliged the royal family to be absent from Paris is not important (historians appreciate round figures), but the implication that everything had returned to normal and that recent events were quite ephemeral is important. The principle of legitimacy had been supposedly restored, and whatever principles the Revolution might have stood for had failed, just as Napoleon had failed. The...