Gwern's Reviews > The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War

What an interesting coincidence. I'm going through a book about the branch of Rothschild dynasty in France and I'm shocked how little I know about them.

By the way, they're crazily socialist, with a tax income of 75% to anyone over 2millions/year. They "attacked" the Rothschild property too.

Can you tell, from the book, whether this socialist tendency comes from before WW I, some sort of reminiscent revolutionary government of the people from the Revolution?

The book doesn't deal much with transfers of wealth or taxation, since its focus is on the common people, not wealthy landlords or merchants or the bourgeois.

That said, pretty sure it comes from before WWI: a lot of wealthy were expropriated during the Revolution. I don't know to what extent it's a French phenomenon - Paris may have had its Communards, but perhaps it's only chance that English groups like the Diggers never got real power in England, for example.

A fantastic review. Not sure why it's showing up on my Goodreads feed in 2016 but I'm grateful!