Theodore Dalrymple reviews Professor Daniel Chirot’s book You Say You Want a Revolution over at Law & Liberty.

The author of this short book, more extended essay than a history of revolutions in the two centuries that followed the French Revolution, sets out to explain why revolutions have so often been followed by slaughter on an unprecedented scale. Pascal said that he who sets out to be an angel ends a beast: to which we might add that he who sets out to create a heaven-on-earth creates a hell.