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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Autumn of the Middle Ages'
In 1919, Johan Huizinga revealed in the original version of this book that the ideals, aspirations, and behaviors of humanity in history were dramatically different from those in present day. In Herfsttjj der Middeleeuwen, he recalled the waning years of the Middle Ages--the low countries in northern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries--and argued against those who claimed that human belief systems remain the same even if contexts change. His account rested not on historical fact, but on the emotions and ambitions of the people as expressed through the art and literature of their culture. Many people treated the book as groundbreaking work, and it was translated into English in 1924. This new translation is a complete, more direct version of the original and allows modern readers a full appreciation of life in an era rarely revisited. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Caesar: The Conquest Of Gaul'
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres... It is, perhaps, the most famous opening line of any memoir in Western civilization. What Caesar and the Romans called "Gaul," although we usually think of it as France, also comprised Belgium, the German lands west of the Rhine, southern Holland, and much of Switzerland. This is the only military campaign of the ancient world for which we have a chronicle written by the general who conducted it, and Julius Caesar is an insightful historian, with a keen eye for detail, as in this scene from the repulsion of the forces of the German king Ariovistus:
Caesar placed each of his five generals ahead of a legion and detailed his quaestor to command the remaining legion, so that every soldier might know that there was a high officer in a position to observe the courage with which he conducted himself, and then led the right wing first into action, because he had noticed that the enemy's line was weakest on that side.[via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Caesar: The Conquest Of Gaul'
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres... It is, perhaps, the most famous opening line of any memoir in Western civilization. What Caesar and the Romans called "Gaul," although we usually think of it as France, also comprised Belgium, the German lands west of the Rhine, southern Holland, and much of Switzerland. This is the only military campaign of the ancient world for which we have a chronicle written by the general who conducted it, and Julius Caesar is an insightful historian, with a keen eye for detail, as in this scene from the repulsion of the forces of the German king Ariovistus:
Caesar placed each of his five generals ahead of a legion and detailed his quaestor to command the remaining legion, so that every soldier might know that there was a high officer in a position to observe the courage with which he conducted himself, and then led the right wing first into action, because he had noticed that the enemy's line was weakest on that side.[via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. Candide is such a book. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the 1750s. But for the general reader, the novel's driving principle is clear enough: the idea (endemic in Voltaire's day) that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and apparent folly, misery and strife are actually harbingers of a greater good we cannot perceive, is hogwash.
Telling the tale of the good-natured but star-crossed Candide (think Mr. Magoo armed with deadly force), as he travels the world struggling to be reunited with his love, Lady Cunegonde, the novel smashes such ill-conceived optimism to splinters. Candide's tutor, Dr. Pangloss, is steadfast in his philosophical good cheer, in the face of more and more fantastic misfortune; Candide's other companions always supply good sense in the nick of time. Still, as he demolishes optimism, Voltaire pays tribute to human resilience, and in doing so gives the book a pleasant indomitability common to farce. Says one character, a princess turned one-buttocked hag by unkind Fate: "I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one's very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"--Michael Gerber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
Candide, Voltaire's biting portrayal of eighteenth-century European society, is a central text of the Enlightenment and essential reading for history students today. Preserving the text's provocative nature, Daniel Gordon's new translation enhances Candide's read-ability and highlights the text's wit and satire for twentieth-century readers. The introduction places the work and its author in historical context, showing students how the complexities of Voltaire's life relate to the events, philosophy, and characters of Candide. A related documents section - with personal correspondence to and from Voltaire - gives students another lens through which to view this influential thinker. Helpful editorial features include explanatory notes throughout the text and a chronology of Voltaire's life. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
In this new translation of Voltaires Candide, distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novels irreverent spirit and offers a vivid, contemporary version of the 250-year-old text. Raffel casts the novel in an English idiom that--had Voltaire been a twenty-first-century American--he might himself have employed. The translation is immediate and unencumbered, and for the first time makes Voltaire the satirist a wicked pleasure for English-speaking readers.
Candide recounts the fantastically improbable travels, adventures, and misfortunes of the young Candide, his beloved Cunégonde, and his devoutly optimistic tutor, Pangloss. Endowed at the start with good fortune and every prospect for happiness and success, the characters nevertheless encounter every conceivable misfortune. Voltaires philosophical tale, in part an ironic attack on the optimistic thinking of such figures as G. W. Leibniz and Alexander Pope, has proved enormously influential over the years. In a general introduction to this volume, historian Johnson Kent Wright places Candide in the contexts of Voltaires life and work and the Age of Enlightenment.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide or Optimism: A Fresh Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism'
Robert M. Adams's superlative revised translation of Candide provides the basis for this widely adopted Norton Critical Edition.
The accompanying apparatus has been revised in accordance with recent biographical and critical materials. The Backgrounds and Criticism sections provide important essays that shed light on major critical issues relevant to Candide and to the intellectual climate of the period. In addition to the reports of five English visitors to Ferney, essays by Haydn Mason, Erich Auerbach, Ernst Cassirer, and Robert M. Adams are included. The final section of the edition, "The Climate of Controversy," summarizes the debate surrounding Voltaire's works and includes essays by Peter Gay, Raymond Naves, Gustave Lanson, and John Morley. Also included are a series of quotations about Voltaire by such prominent figures as Gustave Flaubert, Frederick the Great, and Stendhal, as well as the text of "Pangloss's Song," a ballad from the 1956 Candide-based operetta by Richard Wilbur. [via]More editions of Candide or Optimism: A Fresh Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Chronicles of the Crusades'
Unread/unmarked paperback shelved for decades with minimal wear to cover ships same or next day. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collaborator: The Trial & Execution of Robert Brasillach'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Commentariorvm: Libri VII De Bello Gallico Sum A. Hirti Supplemento'
(Bellum Gallicum, cum A. Hirti supplemento.) Edited by R. L. A. Du Pontet. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Course of French History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Cultural History of the French Revolution'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Enlightenment: An Interpretation The Science of Freedom'
The second volume of Peter Gay's in-depth study of the dawn of the modern worldthe Age of Reason.
The Science of Freedom completes Peter Gay's brilliant reinterpretation begun in The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism. In the present book, he describes the philosophes' program and their views of society. His masterful appraisal opens a new range of insights into the Enlightenment's critical method and its humane and libertarian vision. [via]More editions of The Enlightenment: An Interpretation The Science of Freedom:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Europe and the French Imperium, 1799-1814'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First World War'
Despite the avalanche of books written about the First World War in recent years, there have been comparatively few books that have concentrated on delivering the big picture--a comprehensive account of the war and its campaigns from start to finish--and this book fills the gap superbly. As readers familiar with John Keegan's previous books, such as the The Face Battle, Six Armies in Normandy, and The Second World War, will know, Keegan is a historian of the old school. He has no earth-shattering new theories to challenge the status quo, no first-person accounts to tug on the emotions; what he does have, though, is the gift for talking the lay person through the twists and turns of a complex narrative in a way that is never less than accessible or engaging. Keegan never tries to ram his learning down your throat. Where other authors have struggled to explain how Britain could ever allow itself to be dragged into such a war in 1914, Keegan keeps it practical. The level of communications that we enjoy today just didn't exist then, and so it was much harder to keep track of what was going on. By the time a message had finally reached the person in question, the situation may have changed out of all recognition. Keegan applies this same "cock-up" theory of history to the rest of the war, principally the three great disasters at Gallipoli, the Somme, and Passchendaele. The generals didn't send all those troops to their death deliberately; they did so out of incompetence, ineptitude, and because they had no idea of what was actually going on at the front. Whether deliberate or not, though, the end result was nearly one million dead British and Commonwealth soldiers. The First World War is not afraid to point the finger at those generals who deserve it, but even Keegan has to admit he doesn't have all the answers. If it all seems so obviously futile and such a massive waste of life now, he asks, how could it have seemed worthwhile back then? Why did so many people carry on, knowing they would die? Why indeed. --John Crace [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'French Revolution and the Church'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The French Secret Services'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Gallic War'
The Gallic War, published on the eve of the civil war which led to the end of the Roman Republic, is an autobiographical account written by one of the most famous figures of European history. This new translation reflects the purity of Caesar's Latin while preserving the pace and flow of his momentous narrative of the conquest of Gaul and the first Roman invasions of Britain and Germany. Detailed notes, maps, a table of dates, and glossary make this the most useful edition available. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'History of the Franks'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of the Franks'
Written following the collapse of Rome's secular control over western Europe, the History of Gregory (c. AD 539 594) is a fascinating exploration of the events that shaped sixth-century France. This volume contains all ten books from the work, the last seven of which provide an in-depth description of Gregory's own era, in which he played an important role as Bishop of Tours. With skill and eloquence, Gregory brings the age vividly to life, as he relates the exploits of missionaries, martyrs, kings and queens including the quarrelling sons of Lothar I, and the ruthless Queen Fredegund, third wife of Chilperic. Portraying an age of staggering cruelty and rapid change, this is a powerful depiction of the turbulent progression of faith at a time of political and social chaos. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Illustrated History of the First World War'
John Keegan's The First World War was everywhere praised, and became the definitive account of the war that created the modern world. The New York Times Book Review acclaimed Keegan as "the best military historian of our day," and the Washington Post called the book "a grand narrative history [and] a pleasure to read."
Now Keegan gives us a lavishly illustrated history of the war, brilliantly interweaving his narrative--some of it derived from his classic work and some of it new--with a brilliant selection of photograps, paintings, cartoons and posters drawn from archives across Europe and America, some published here for the first time. These images take us into the heart of battles that have become legend: Ypres, Gallipoli, Verdun, the Somme. They show us the generals' war and the privates' war--young soldiers, away from home for the first time, coming of age under fire.
We see how a civilization at the height of its power and influence crippled itself as the faith in progress, rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment was shattered. We see how four empires--the German, the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman--collapsed, and how the seeds for the Second World War were planted. Keegan tells how ambition, mistrust and failures of diplomacy and communication all played a part in allowing this conflict to set ablaze what was then the world's most prosperous society. And he describes how the effects of this war lasted long after it ended; its ghosts still haunt Europe today.
An Illustrated History of the First World War carries us across the Europe of nearly a century ago, revealing the devastation, camaraderie, political machinations and battlefield maneuverings that changed the world. It presents the essential cast of that cataclysmic drama, from the decision makers at the top--Haig, Joffre, Hindenberg, Pershing--to the troops in the trenches. Through its unique amalgam of pictorial and narrative brilliance, the book illuminates the war as no other work has done. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Is Paris Burning'
From the bestselling author of The City of Joy comes the dramatic story of the Allied liberation of Paris. Is Paris Burning? reconstructs the network of fateful events--the drama, the fervor, and the triumph--that heralded one of the most dramatic episodes of our time. This bestseller about 1944 Paris is timed to meet the demand for Dominique Lapierre books that will be generated by the March release of his compelling new Warner hardcover, Beyond Love. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution 1793-1794'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lectures on the French Revolution'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lives of the Kings and Queens of France'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Man in the Iron Mask'
Alexandre Dumas was already a best-selling novelist when he wrote this historical romance, combining (as he claimed) the two essentials of life--"l'action et l'amour." The Man in the Iron Mask climactically concludes the epic adventures of the three Musk3ateers: here, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and their friend D'Artagnan, once invincible, meet their destinies. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Monk's Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent'
A Monk's Confession is the first completely new English translation of Guibert of Nogent's remarkable memoirs in over seventy years. Written around the year 1115, they offer an unparalleled look at the life of a monk in the Middle Ages. Guibert, who lived his entire life in northern France, called these memoirs his book of monodiae, or solitary songs. Many scholars consider them the first Latin autobiography in the West after Augustine's Confessions. Readers will be stirred and surprised by Guibert's intense preoccupation with the sinfulness of his soul, his visions of demons and necromancy, and his frank struggle to come to terms with his sexuality. But Guibert is also a valuable witness to his age. In addition to his personal history, his memoirs give a brief chronicle of the abbey of Nogent--where he served as abbot for some twenty years--and a vivid account of the bloody uprising of the Laon Commune in 1112. His observations give precious insight into education, monastic life, and the beginnings of the great medieval towns.Paul J. Archambault's translation successfully renders Guibert's Latin--at times stylish, at times rustic--into lively, modern English. He consulted Edmond-Rene Labande's authoritative 1981 Latin edition with French translation. He provides a complete introduction and annotation that help situate Guibert within the history and literature of the Middle Ages while permitting readers to judge for themselves how to interpret this fascinating voice from the past. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Napoleon and Wellington'
On the morning of the battle of Waterloo, the Emperor Napoleon declared that the Duke of Wellington was a bad general, the British were bad soldiers and that France could not fail to win an easy victory. Forever afterwards historians have accused him of gross overconfidence, and massively underestimating the calibre of the British commander opposed to him. Andrew Roberts presents an original, highly revisionist view of the relationship between the two greatest captains of their age. Napoleon, who was born in the same year as Wellington - 1769 - fought Wellington by proxy years earlier in the Peninsula War, praising his ruthlessness in private while publicly deriding him as a mere 'sepoy general'. In contrast, Wellington publicly lauded Napoleon, saying that his presence on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men, but privately wrote long memoranda lambasting Napoleon's campaigning techniques. Although Wellington saved Napoleon from execution after Waterloo, Napoleon left money in his will to the man who had tried to assassinate Wellington. Wellington in turn amassed a series of Napoleonic trophies of his great victory, even sleeping with two of the Emperor's mistresses. The constantly changing relationship between these two nineteenth-century giants forms the basis of Andrew Roberts' compelling study in pride, rivalry, propaganda, nostalgia, and posthumous revenge. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Napoleon's Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paris: A Century of Change, Eighteen Seventy-Eight to Nineteen Seventy-Eight'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The People's Armies'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The People's Armies: The Armies Revolutionnaries Instrument of the Terror in the Departments April 1793 to Floreal Year II'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Persian Letters'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Red and the Black'
Little appreciated in its day, this 1831 classic by Henri Beyle (that was Stendhal's real name) tells the story of the rise and fall of Julien Sorel, a man of affairs in every sense. It's also a scathing indictment of a materialistic society, France under the Bourbons and an irresistible chronicle of love, politics and manners. The book now resides securely on most short lists of the world's great novels. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Red and the Black : A Chronicle of 1830'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Red And the Black: A chronicle of the Nineteenth Century'
In December 1827, a French newspaper ran a story about a young man charged with the attempted murder of a married woman. The article fired the imagination of Marie Henri Beyle, and under the pen name Stendhal, he set to writing what was to become one of the great psychological novels of all time. I will be famous around 1880, he predicted in one of his many diaries. I shall not go out of style, nor my glory go out of style.
Set in a provincial French town and in Paris, The Red and the Black tells the story of Julien Sorel, a handsome and brilliant young tutor who is both hero and villain. Cold, opportunistic, and uncompromising with othersincluding his influential mistresshe follows his lust for power and wealth. At the same time, he is tortured by his uncontrollable passions, and by the military and religious forcesthe enigmatic Red and Blackthat dominate French society in the years following the Revolution.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Red and the Black : A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century'
One of the great novels of the century, The Red and the Black is a powerful character study of Julien Sorel, a clever and idealistic young opportunist who attempts to rise above his station through a combination of talent, deception, and hypocrisy. He uses his powers of seduction and charm to secure advancement, only to find himself betrayed by his own passions and outwitted by the larger political and social intrigues of post-Napoleonic France. His doomed quest for fortune and love is both heroic and satirical, reflecting the inner tensions and outer pretensions that result from desiring what is not ours. Stendhal's complex portrayal of his characters' thoughts and feelings was far ahead of his time, earning The Red and the Black recognition as the first modern psychological novel, with Julien as his most brilliant creation and one of the greatest characters in all of literature. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Road from Versailles : Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Fall of the French Monarchy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Saint Joan of Arc'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Scarlet and Black'
It mirrors, rather than paints, mobile and revealing glimpses of life as it was whiled away in the climate of fear and greedy drawing-room conformity that followed Waterloo. Julien Sorel, the novel's restless, ambitious hero, rebels against his circumstances and wills himself to make something of his life by adopting a code of hypocrisy. On the road to the surprising crime he commits (out of passion, principle or insanity), he turns into Stendhal's greatest and most completely human creation. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'
The first and most successful in the Baronesss series of books that feature Percy Blakeney, who leads a double life as an English fop and a swashbuckling rescuer of aristocrats, The Scarlet Pimpernel was the blueprint for what became known as the masked-avenger genre. As Anne Perry writes in her Introduction, the novel has almost reached its first centenary, and it is as vivid and appealing as ever because the plotting is perfect. It is a classic example of how to construct, pace, and conclude a plot. . . . To rise on the crest of laughter without capsizing, to survive being written, rewritten, and reinterpreted by each generation, is the mark of a plot that is timeless and universal, even though it happens to be set in England and France of 1792.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seven Commentaries on the Gallic War With an Eighth Commentary by Aulus Hirtius'
The Gallic War, published on the eve of the civil war which led to the end of the Roman Republic, is an autobiographical account written by one of the most famous figures of European history. This new translation reflects the purity of Caesar's Latin while preserving the pace and flow of his momentous narrative of the conquest of Gaul and the first Roman invasions of Britain and Germany. Detailed notes, maps, a table of dates, and glossary make this the most useful edition available. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armee'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tale of Two Cities'
Dickens' second historical novel, which he considered "the best story I have written," provides a highly-charged examination of human suffering and human sacrifice. Private experience and public history paralled one another as the political activities and personal responsibilities of these fictional characters, during the French Revolution, draw them into the Paris of the Terror. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Their Gracious Pleasure'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Toward the Brink'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-44'
A strong and disturbing account of the Vichy period, demonstrating how in the interests of stability, French national feeling favored collaboration with the German-controlled regime. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Voltaire in Love'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Waning of the Middle Ages'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Xivth and Xvth Centuries'
In 1919, Johan Huizinga revealed in the original version of this book that the ideals, aspirations, and behaviors of humanity in history were dramatically different from those in present day. In Herfsttjj der Middeleeuwen, he recalled the waning years of the Middle Ages--the low countries in northern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries--and argued against those who claimed that human belief systems remain the same even if contexts change. His account rested not on historical fact, but on the emotions and ambitions of the people as expressed through the art and literature of their culture. Many people treated the book as groundbreaking work, and it was translated into English in 1924. This new translation is a complete, more direct version of the original and allows modern readers a full appreciation of life in an era rarely revisited. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind from America, 1778-1781'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A World on Fire: A Heretic, An Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars' Rebellion Against the Inquisition 1290-1329'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris'
Zarafa was a gentle 19th-century giraffe, a simple animal whose life was dictated by the tumultuous times around her. From the African savanna where she was caught and tamed as an infant, Zarafa was shipped down the Nile--along with the meat of her mother and several hundred human slaves--to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From there she sailed on to France, a gift from Muhammad Ali, the "Renaissance Barbarian" viceroy of Egypt, intended to distract King Charles X while Egyptian forces invaded Greece. As political ploy, it didn't work. But as ambassador from an exotic land, this odd animal captivated the French people for almost two decades, as she lived out her life as part of the royal menagerie.
Michael Allin intertwines natural history with a brutal chapter in the history of civilization, augmenting the clarity of both. This story of one docile animal contrasts sharply with those of the human profiteers, warmongers, and interlopers who ultimately decide her fate. But Zarafa's otherworldly charm also helps us to understand the intrigue that led Napoleon to bring not only his troops, but a small army of European intellectuals to study all aspects of Egyptian culture and history, in the invasion that sets up her story. --Lauran Cole Warner [via]
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