The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin

On Thursday, March 5, the Clements Center for National Security, the School of Civic Leadership and the Department of History hosted Dan Edelstein, William H. Bonsall Professor of French and Professor, by courtesy, of History and of Political Science at Stanford University for a book talk on his recent release The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin.

Dan Edelstein is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French, and Professor of Political Science and History (by courtesy) at Stanford University, where he is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He directs Stanford’s first-year general education requirement, COLLEGE, and co-leads the Stanford Civics Initiative. He is the author of four books on European intellectual and political history: The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (Chicago, 2009), The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago, 2010), On the Spirit of Rights (Chicago, 2018), and The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin (Princeton, 2025). He is the co-editor of seven volumes of essays, including (with Stefanos Geroulanos and Natasha Wheatley) Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History (Chicago, 2020). In 2006, he received the Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching.

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