Here are 100 books that Phantom of the Guillotine fans have personally recommended if you like
Phantom of the Guillotine.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I’m a very ordinary person. A history and literary nerd. A wife and mother. I don’t have any M.As or PhDs. I started teaching myself to write in 1991, and after joining the Romance Writers of America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Writing NSW (New South Wales), I had my first writing award, and first short story published in 1997. I got my first writing contract in 2000 (Silhouette Books, NY). I quit romance in 2012 to focus on historical fiction and YA, both of which I still love, and putting a little romance in there never hurts. I've given workshops and talks for the Historical Novel Societies of Australia and North America.
Tom Pocock, a Naval Correspondent for The Times and Defence Correspondent for the London Evening Standard, has been described as the foremost authority on Admiral Nelson. But going past Nelson, in this book, he delves deeply into the lesser-known people that helped Nelson – and Britain – win the Napoleonic Wars, mission by mission, battle by battle.
This book is an absolute treasure-trove of information for anyone interested in the more secret ways Britain fought the first half of the Napoleonic Wars. “This book tells, through contemporary letters, journals, and newspapers, the gripping story of the secret war and of the shadowy but fascinating figures who did their utmost to undermine French plans.” This book inspired years of research – books and physical trips – that created The Tide Watchers. It brought the people of “the secret war” to life, American inventor Robert Fulton’s life in France, and the…
Nelson's victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 was a pivotal event in European history. But Trafalgar was not simply an isolated battle fought and won in an afternoon - the naval campaign had in fact begun more than four years before. This extraordinary period, following Napoleon's threat to invade England in 1801, came to be known as The Great Terror, and Britain was on the alert. As the Grande Armee faced a Dad's army of English volunteers across the Channel, a secret war of espionage and subversion was fought in the shadows. New weapons - rockets, submarines and torpedoes…
I’m a very ordinary person. A history and literary nerd. A wife and mother. I don’t have any M.As or PhDs. I started teaching myself to write in 1991, and after joining the Romance Writers of America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Writing NSW (New South Wales), I had my first writing award, and first short story published in 1997. I got my first writing contract in 2000 (Silhouette Books, NY). I quit romance in 2012 to focus on historical fiction and YA, both of which I still love, and putting a little romance in there never hurts. I've given workshops and talks for the Historical Novel Societies of Australia and North America.
“A tour de force of research, an essential document for future students of the (Napoleonic Wars) subject.”
Sparrow, “an acknowledged authority on the beginnings of the British Secret Service” is a meticulous researcher, who goes deeply into the world of British and French espionage of the time, and what motivated them to act for or betray their countries. This absolute treasure was given to me by a writer friend. I’ve marked it to bits, with highlights, notes, and Post-Its everywhere. It’s a university course on the deeper facets of the Napoleonic Wars all on its own. Leaving aside heroism, she presents facts about the politics and spymasters, and what they had to do to win the war. This book was invaluable in bringing my own book to life, making characters less hero and more human.
Something rare in the study of a period or a subject: a genuinely substantial addition to knowledge, of a kind that will henceforth need to be taken fully into account in any study of the British conduct of the great French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. JOHN EHRMAN A tour de force of research, an essential document for future students of the subject. JOHN LE CARRE Elizabeth Sparrow traces the origins of the British secret service to the turbulent aftermath of the French revolution, when Pitt's government, concerned to forestall civil unrest in England, set uppolice surveillance to counteract immigration and…
I’m a very ordinary person. A history and literary nerd. A wife and mother. I don’t have any M.As or PhDs. I started teaching myself to write in 1991, and after joining the Romance Writers of America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Writing NSW (New South Wales), I had my first writing award, and first short story published in 1997. I got my first writing contract in 2000 (Silhouette Books, NY). I quit romance in 2012 to focus on historical fiction and YA, both of which I still love, and putting a little romance in there never hurts. I've given workshops and talks for the Historical Novel Societies of Australia and North America.
This compelling history goes “beyond the legend that Napoleon himself helped create, to form a new, genuinely international context for his military career.”
History is most often written by the victors, and real life is never so one-sided. Esdaile writes as though he lived Napoleon’s life, and shows that many times his decisions were made (or changed) because of acts, or provocation, by British diplomats or agents. The quote by Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense says it all: “Any man who becomes the sole head of a great country by means other than heredity can only maintain himself in power if he gives the nation either liberty or military glory – if he makes himself, in short, either a Washington or a conqueror...it was impossible for him to establish...an absolute power except by bemusing reason [and] by every three months presenting the French people with some new spectacle.” Esdaile brings this unspoken…
A glorious?and conclusive?chronicle of the wars waged by one of the most polarizing figures in military history
Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as a new standard on the subject, this sweeping, boldly written history of the Napoleonic era reveals its central protagonist as a man driven by an insatiable desire for fame, and determined ?to push matters to extremes.? More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, it offers a panoramic view of the armed conflicts that spread so quickly out of revolutionary France to countries as remote as Sweden and Egypt. As it expertly moves through conflicts…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I’m a very ordinary person. A history and literary nerd. A wife and mother. I don’t have any M.As or PhDs. I started teaching myself to write in 1991, and after joining the Romance Writers of America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Writing NSW (New South Wales), I had my first writing award, and first short story published in 1997. I got my first writing contract in 2000 (Silhouette Books, NY). I quit romance in 2012 to focus on historical fiction and YA, both of which I still love, and putting a little romance in there never hurts. I've given workshops and talks for the Historical Novel Societies of Australia and North America.
This book
shows the caricatures done by cartoonists of the time. If you pay enough
attention to the dates, these can shed new or deeper light on accepted history.
The minutiae of these cartoons teaches you a lot about the time and the
thoughts of the general public, or how the media wanted to sway them to think. For
example, on pages 24 and 25, the cartoons show “Citizen Fox” – showing this
British subject living in France as joining the Republican system. “French
Telegraph Making Signals in the Dark” (James Gillray) and “The Raft in Danger,
or the Republican Crew Disappointed” (Isaac Cruikshank) shows the many wild
rumors and general fear of French invasion around 1798, after the failed
invasion via Ireland, who was then fighting for independence from the crushing
absentee English landlords. Going deeper with this idea, you can see the fear
of war on two fronts…
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, the junior artillery officer of the French Revolution who became emperor and dictator of nearly all of western Europe, was the most caricatured figure of his time, with almost 1000 satirical drawings being produced about his exploits by British artists alone. Long before the advent of illustrated daily or weekly newspapers these hand-coloured prints were a major source of news and opinion and had considerable impact on the public at large. From the battles of the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Jena and Leipzig to the Peninsular War, the invasion of Russia, exile on Elba and his final defeat…
I have studied revolutions for over forty years, trying to understand how people fought for liberty and democracy--but also to understand how things so often went wrong! I have worked at universities in the US, the UK, Japan, Germany, Russia, and Hong Kong, gaining a global view of how societies change. I have learned that everywhere people have to struggle for their rights. Whether in ancient Greece or in modern Cambodia, the resulting revolutionary drama unfolds sometimes with wonderful results, but sometimes with tragedy. No events better display the very best and worst that we can accomplish. I’ve chosen the books on this list to convey the power of revolutions, their grand successes and tragic failures.
There are a thousand books on the French Revolution, but most of them focus on the foibles of the aristocracy, or the wild rage of the crowds, or the heroism of Napoleon. Popkin’s new history does a masterful job of covering all the key events and personalities in France in the years leading up to the Revolution and in its unfolding over almost two decades. He is particularly good at placing the Revolution in the context of world history (showing its relation to events in the New World, from the American Revolution to the Revolution in Haiti), and in keeping a focus on the role of the French Revolution in the history of liberty. Indeed, through the eyes of the revolutionaries and their followers in this book, you can watch the dawn of liberty arise in the early years of the Revolution, and then fade under the increasingly militarist and…
The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society -- even if, after more than two hundred years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society. We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all of their brilliance and vengefulness; we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI; we see women…
I have been fascinated by Napoleon and the French Revolution since I was a teenager. Novels that capture the essence of the struggles of the French people – and especially those that feature Napoleon as a highly layered character – have always called to me. As a Jewish author, I am particularly drawn to a fair representation of Jewish characters in these tales – which frankly, Georgette Heyer does not, as she adheres to stereotypes in describing any Jewish characters. (I only forgive her because her books are so brilliant.)
I read this book first as a teenager and it was my original introduction to Napoleon and the French Revolution. The story of young love, betrayal, and the stirring events in France before, during, and after Napoleon becomes Emperor, the novel is told as a diary, which lends the book immediacy and poignancy.
As a Jewish reader, I particularly enjoyed Selinko’s description of how Désirée’s Jewish neighbors marched off to war, having been given citizenship for the first time in millennia.
I’ve read this book countless times, both as a young reader and as an adult, and it continues to be an all-time favorite. It also shaped my own approach to portraying Napoleon.
"An epic love story...irresistible reading." -Chicago Tribune
To be young, in France, and in love: fourteen year old Desiree can't believe her good fortune. Her fiance, a dashing and ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte, is poised for battlefield success, and no longer will she be just a French merchant's daughter. She could not have known the twisting path her role in history would take, nearly breaking her vibrant heart but sweeping her to a life rich in passion and desire.
A love story, but so much more, Désirée explores the landscape of a young heart torn in two, giving readers a compelling…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…
I have been fascinated by Napoleon and the French Revolution since I was a teenager. Novels that capture the essence of the struggles of the French people – and especially those that feature Napoleon as a highly layered character – have always called to me. As a Jewish author, I am particularly drawn to a fair representation of Jewish characters in these tales – which frankly, Georgette Heyer does not, as she adheres to stereotypes in describing any Jewish characters. (I only forgive her because her books are so brilliant.)
I loved this modern retelling of the story of Désirée Clary, which was somewhat rawer and more visceral than the original Désirée. It continued to help shape my own impressions of Napoleon, who does not come off well in this novel.
Pataki’s ability to capture life at court, Désirée’s continued entanglements with both Napoleon and Josephine, as well as her elevation to the Swedish court as princess and then queen (which she was never comfortable with), is brilliantly captured.
A sweeping novel about the extraordinary woman who captured Napoleon’s heart, created a dynasty, and changed the course of history—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Traitor's Wife, The Accidental Empress, and Sisi
“I absolutely loved The Queen’s Fortune, the fascinating, little-known story of Desiree Clary—the woman Napoleon left for Josephine—who ultimately triumphed and became queen of Sweden.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
As the French revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone and it’s fallen on her…
I’m a historian who has been researching and writing on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars for thirty-five years now. Since the age of ten I have been fascinated by these years, partly through childhood holidays in France, but also because of their sheer drama. British history in the same period has nothing to compare with the storming of the Bastille or Napoleon’s meteoric career. Specializing in this turbulent era has made me particularly interested in how regimes fall, and whether under different circumstances they could have survived.
This is not an easy read, but it is a seminal work by the greatest modern historian of the French Revolution, which made an enormous impression on me when I first read it as a student in the 1980s. It marked a decisive break with what up until then had been the standard view of the Revolution as a class struggle. For Furet, the Revolution’s real importance lay elsewhere, as the first modern experiment with democracy – in his eloquent words, "a beginning and a haunting vision of that beginning."
The French Revolution is an historical event unlike any other. It is more than just a topic of intellectual interest: it has become part of a moral and political heritage. But after two centuries, this central event in French history has usually been thought of in much the same terms as it was by its contemporaries. There have been many accounts of the French Revolution, and though their opinions differ, they have often been commemorative or anniversary interpretations of the original event. The dividing line of revolutionary historiography, in intellectual terms, is therefore not between the right and the left,…
My expertise in Caribbean and Chinese affairs derives from having an interest in the two regions since college, which was then pursued through a MA in Asian Studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut. On the employment front, I worked for 3 regional banks (as an international economist), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Credit Suisse, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, KWR International, and Aladdin Capital Management (as head of Credit and Economics Research) and Mitsubishi Corporation. Since I left Mitsubishi I returned to my two favorite interests, Asia and the Caribbean.
No discussion of global history and politics would not be complete without some mention of the French Revolution. Clarke’s book was a wonderful romp into French history, providing an elegant and insightful discussion of what went wrong with the revolution – or why the outcome in la Belle France ended up in the Terror, Republican government and Napoleon Bonaparte, while England became a constitutional monarchy. Clarke offers up considerable food for thought. We would expect nothing less from the same man who wrote 1000 Years of Annoying the French and Talk to the Snail.
An entertaining and eye-opening look at the French Revolution, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde.
The French Revolution and What Went Wrong looks back at the French Revolution and how it's surrounded in a myth. In 1789, almost no one in France wanted to oust the king, let alone guillotine him. But things quickly escalated until there was no turning back.
The French Revolution and What Went Wrong looks at what went wrong and why France would be better off if they had kept their monarchy.
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
I have been fascinated by Napoleon and the French Revolution since I was a teenager. Novels that capture the essence of the struggles of the French people – and especially those that feature Napoleon as a highly layered character – have always called to me. As a Jewish author, I am particularly drawn to a fair representation of Jewish characters in these tales – which frankly, Georgette Heyer does not, as she adheres to stereotypes in describing any Jewish characters. (I only forgive her because her books are so brilliant.)
A thrilling and fully immersive description of the French Revolution; I loved this book in particular for its moving description of how the Jews of Paris were affected.
I found Madame Tussand’s story to be a wonderful frame for the upheaval in France at the time – especially as a highly layered, wonderful character whose strong personality helped her to survive troubling times.
It’s definitely my favorite Michelle Moran book – and that’s tough, considering how many amazing historical novels she’s written.
