The Days of the French Revolution

by Christopher Hibbert

Amazon Price: $10.88 (as of 08/21/2008)

This is a great book to learn about the French Revolution. It's full of interesting characters and packed with nonstop action. The author doesn't analyze or judge from the vantage point of an armchair 200 years later. If you want to know what sort of people Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, Marat, Danton, and other names from history were, you'll hear it from their friends, enemies, relatives, neighbors, servants and clients. You get the feel for what it was like to be a lawyer, butcher, restaurateur, farmer, journalist in 18th-century France. You'll find out what it was really like to be imprisoned in the Bastille, to be pounding on your husband's locked door while a mob was trying to break your bedroom door down, to get up on a table and address a a riotous crowd for the first time in your life, and even what it felt, looked and sounded like to be guillotined. The author doesn't intrude on the story at all; he lets the facts speak for themselves. He doesn't moralize, you reach your own conclusions about what happens when mob rule takes over, when violence generates more violence, and the rules of law and order are abandoned. This is one of the best written history books I've read in a long time, as absorbing as any novel. I'd have hated to miss it and it's a great way to learn.

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