"People choose to resist and rebel and people make revolutions. They do this in no small measure by making stories, stories that also make them people. Eric Selbin, author of these words, is the leading advocate for the undeniable centrality of the human side of culture, agency, and identity in the study of revolutions today. This work, beautifully written and subtly powerful in its surprising messages for scholars and activists, fully lives up to the promise of its title, from its first page to its eloquent conclusions. Written with passion and humanity, it is for anyone interested in understanding why people matter in projects of radical social change, in the past and into the not so foreseeable future." - John Foran, Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Barbara

"From the retelling of the 1534/35 Anabaptist reign in Münster, to the 17th century slave revolt in northeast Brazil, to the construction of more famous events like the French, Russian and Cuban revolutions, Eric Selbin investigates the myth, memory and mimesis of revolutionary stories. Putting forward the provocative theme that who and what we are is inseparable from the stories we tell, he shows how stories of past revolutions condition how later politics is played. Building his narrative around four basic stories of revolution -- some elitist, some popular, some conservative and others subversive -- Selbin has written a book that every student of contentious politics should read." - Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University