‘The Event’ Is an Incisive, Powerful Record of Political Uncertainty

Long before the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace, the word “revolution” began its long linguistic journey in a much different place. It was celestial, referring to the movement of planets; think of Nicolas Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. The political sense of the term didn’t stick until the late 17th century, with England’s …