The Great Nation

In a flourishing and prosperous period, eighteenth-century France dominated the world as the great economic power of Europe, and as the cultural heart of the intellectual and artistic Enlightenment. While this period is often viewed in terms of the Revolution, with the Bourbon monarchy bound for catastrophe, in this magnificent and groundbreaking book Colin Jones argues that its bloody downfall was not at all predictable. He shows that eighteenth-century France was a dynamic society and tells the fascinating story of why the Bourbon monarchy that presided over it fell in 1789.