[.ca] Travellers History Of France (ISBN 1566562805)

Short history of France:
This is an excellent book for pre-trip reading or to include on your trip if you have space as you'll refer to it frequently. France for the general reader, not the French History expert.

Quick & Dirty:
When I travel I like to read the historic markers and understand the significance of what I am seeing. If I don't have a clue about the context ("the what dynasty was when?") I tend to feel lost and frustrated. Typically, I don't have the time in the weeks before my trip to digest an eight volume history of a country but would like a high level view of the important people, periods and events in the country's history. "A Traveller's History France" perfectly fit that bill. Some of the features I liked are a list of all the French kings and their linneage, a timeline with all the relevant events and an alphabetical list of major events and battles. The writing is lucid, succinct as well as funny and opinionated. In this kind of book its important to convey a sense and a feel of entire century in the space of a paragraph and to stay connected to the larger political and social themes imbedded in the historical minutae. Robert Cole does this quite well. The biggest negative for me is that half the book focuses on the last two hundred years and that is the period of French History I know best. I would have enjoyed more of a discussion of the rise of the monarchy, the British influence in France because of the various invasions and a richer discussion of the religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Boring...:
The subject is not definetely boring but this book is. Why? the relation of events are handled poorly, daily life is not written, the place of France in Europe in terms of political status or economical status is not written. It is like a reference book giving the dates and people names, who married to whom, who administered what part of country. This is definetely not history. I am still looking for a good book on France's history.