Customer Reviews

History of France

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Enjoyable afternoon read to learn about France, it's fedal past, disparity of classes, kings and nobles, revolution and its various experiments with social egalitarianism as a response to a millenium of oppressive rule by its own increasingly aloof nobility. Fascinating to learn how the nobilty actually became entrapped by their own separation from the peasantry and in essence bacame slaves themselves to the Court by the pensions they accepted from the Crown that itself was bankrupt even though it levied ever heavier taxes on the workers.

Can there be parallels to today's social economic systems that pay out to government workers? Are the non-government workers becoming a form of over taxed peasantry and pensioners a form of government supported nobility?

The history ends in late 1800's.

You will want to have some historical maps of Europe handy.

It is understandable why this book is free. It indeed is a short history of France from medieval times to late 1800's. Because it is short many finer details are left out and references to people and places leave one slightly confused, if they lack a basis of French history. It is however a decent "starter" book if you want to start to read books about any history, and will give you somewhere to start if you are looking to research this topic.

I know its a SHORT history, but I found this to be much to superficial, skimpy, and uninteresting. To complicated and confusing regarding Midieval France, vey light on Napoleon III and stops at 1870 period. I was lookiing forward to the French Revolution section but I was disappointed. I didn't add to my understanding of the period.