Notes: A detailed, beautifully illustrated (with 20 color plates) history of a tumultous era of high-medieval French history, inspired by the author's interest in learning the effects of the Black Plague on society. In her own words in the book's foreword, it was "a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant" (p. xiii). Castles, crusades, wars, betrayals and the bubonic plague that wiped out one-third of Europe and was responded to with virulent anti-Semitism are all here, told in a style lively enough to have made this lengthy book a page-turner and a classic.

Notes: A detailed but briskly written history of the battle that established Henry V as a king and a true leader, and of the events leading to it, including the long and devastating (to the French) siege of Harfleur. Contains a detailed bibliography, lengthy notes and beautiful color illustrations.

Notes: This is a detailed, comprehensive yet highly readable study of that most terrible era of France's recent history. Anti-Semitism, the Resistance, Nazi collaboration, and the Vichy government are described at length, but so are the lives of ordinary people and the views they dared to express through such means as jokes. (Limited availability.)

Notes: Patrick O'Brian's translation of the first part of Lacouture's biography of De Gaulle reads as gracefully as if it had been originally written in English. This massive yet engrossing biography depicts a more complex man than the political icon most of us think of, detailing, among other elements of his life, his love of and devotion to his family, especially his daughter Anne, who was born with Down syndrome in 1928 and died twenty years later.

Notes: There's no way to truly do justice, in one volume, to the 20th-century history of France or any other country, but Rod Kedward does a masterful job of conveying a balanced picture of the political, social and ideological life of France from the years of "l'affaire Dreyfus" (at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th) to the last years of the 20th. Instead of approaching that century as a list of names, dates and events, or simply discussing those events and their sources, impact and outcome, he concentrates on the people and their ideas, lives and efforts to effect or impede change and reform. This monumental book is thus engrossing and highly readable.

Notes: Goubert focuses on the main events (the "big picture") of France from 987 to around 1987, in a style that's richly detailed and brisk at the same time, thanks in this English-language edition to the translating skill of Maarten Ultee. This is a highly engaging general history of the country, appealing to college students and the general reader alike.

Notes: A fast-paced yet detailed study of the political, social, psychological and economic havoc wreaked on France by the war that was meant to end all wars. Personal stories as well as specific examples--of the physical decline of a politician and the violence inflicted on a woman by her husband, for instance--illustrate the impact of the devastation on the country.

Notes: A sweeping story of the Revolution and its players whose length should not be a deterrent to any reader. This book reads like an epic novel...the difference, of course, being that it's a true (and meticulously researched) story.

Notes: First published in 1941, Palmer's narrative of the reign of the Committee of Public Safety brilliantly conjures up images of both the misplaced idealism and the chaos and bloodshed of the era. Palmer's style makes the book read like a screenplay; it's no accident that college and graduate students have been enjoying it for decades, even when it's been required reading on syllabi.

Notes: The first volume of Toqueville's classic study of the Revolution and its sources and significance. The language of Kahan's translation seems at times a little old-fashioned (with fewer contractions than we would use, for instance), but the book is a fine read.