A strikingly new account of the impact of the French Revolution in Paris, across the French countryside, and around the globe The French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically...

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of "instant" communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon. From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used...

Birn's exceptionally well-written narrative covers the century and a half that preceded the French Revolution. The first section, "An Age of Crisis and Discovery (1648-1715)," treats the period between the Peace of Westphalia and the death of Louis XIV as a time of political experimentation,...