The best books on Louis XVI

What is my book about?

The French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically transformed France and launched shock waves across the world.

In this new history, I sought to create a fresh account of one of the world’s great revolutions—its origins, drama, complexity, and significance. Was the Revolution a major turning point in French—even world—history, or was it instead a protracted period of violent upheaval and warfare that wrecked millions of lives? We also need to examine the varying experiences of most French citizens who lived outside the gates of the city: the provincial men and women whose daily lives were overwhelmed by revolution and war. The stories of individuals who struggled to cope in such unpredictable times enable us to enter the social and cultural world of the eighteenth century which was transformed by France’s age of revolution. Life would never be the same again for anyone.

What is my book about?

This is an accessible, up-to-date, illustrated history of France and the French that captures the absence of any inevitable pattern of development, and also the interactions of the geography of France with political circumstances. While taking an essentially chronological approach, there is an engagement with important continuities. A helpful guide to understanding France today.

What is my book about?

The French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically transformed France and launched shock waves across the world.

In this new history, I sought to create a fresh account of one of the world’s great revolutions—its origins, drama, complexity, and significance. Was the Revolution a major turning point in French—even world—history, or was it instead a protracted period of violent upheaval and warfare that wrecked millions of lives? We also need to examine the varying experiences of most French citizens who lived outside the gates of the city: the provincial men and women whose daily lives were overwhelmed by revolution and war. The stories of individuals who struggled to cope in such unpredictable times enable us to enter the social and cultural world of the eighteenth century which was transformed by France’s age of revolution. Life would never be the same again for anyone.

What is my book about?

This book treats a series of intriguing, influential women from Agnès Sorel, designated as an official favorite in 1444 to the death in 1599 of Gabrielle d’Estrées, a mistress Henry IV had promised to marry. The queens and mistresses of the intervening years included, among others, Anne of Brittany who married two successive kings of France and remained duchess of Brittany, Catherine de Medici who was not simply queen when her husband reigned but also influential queen mother during her three sons’ reigns, and Diane de Poitiers who cast Henry II’s reign as a chivalric romance.

The queens and mistresses this book treats were significant to the politics of the period. They are, I contend, far more interesting and important than the much more familiar six wives of Henry VIII of England.

What is my book about?

Most people think Napoleon’s fall came in 1815 at Waterloo, but my book focuses instead on the crucial yet neglected two years that came before, between his disastrous retreat from Moscow in 1812 and his first abdication and exile in 1814. Even after the Russian disaster, I argue, Napoleon still had a good chance of keeping his throne and much of his empire, but instead rejected compromise peace offers from his opponents, and preferred to gamble on total victory at the risk of total defeat. Why he chose this fatal path has always been controversial, but in my book, based on new archival discoveries, I set out answers of my own.

What is my book about?

As Bittersweet Tapestry, the third volume of Kevin O’Connell’s continuing Derrynane Saga opens, Eileen O’Connell and her husband, Arthur O’Leary, an officer of the Hungarian Hussars, have departed Vienna – where she served for almost a decade as governess to Maria Theresa’s youngest daughter, now Marie Antoinette, Dauphine of France. 

Their life in Ascendancy-ruled Ireland is in stark contrast to what they left behind, as well as to that of Eileen’s brothers, officers in the Irish Brigade of France, her youngest one, Hugh, now wed to the French Princess Royal. The Irish story evolves into a dark, violent, and bloody tale...ultimately involving an epic tragedy – which results in what has been called, “The greatest poem written in (Ireland and Britain) in the whole Eighteenth Century.”

What is my book about?

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely is a spirited biography of the life of France’s most famous Enlightenment-era atheist. For those people who have never heard of him, Diderot was the consummate Enlightenment polymath, the type of thinker who might write on ancient Chinese and Greek music first thing in the morning, study the mechanics of a cotton mill until noon, help purchase some paintings for Catherine the Great in the afternoon, and then return home and compose a play and a fifteen-page letter to his mistress before going to bed. This book chronicles Diderot’s amazing life, including his tormented relationship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often-iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion.