David A. Bell

David Avrom Bell is an American historian specializing in French history.

• ...Even in the most intimate forms of writing, people still followed established conventions and wrote what they felt was expected of them. They could lie to their friends and family, even to themselves.
  • Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution [1]

• Ideas do not have force outside specific social contexts. The same ideas may have enormous force in one context and look bizarre or repulsive in another.
  • "For a New Social History of the Enlightenment: Authors, Readers, and Commercial Capitalism", Cambridge University Press (31 March 2022)