In this book, now available in paperback, he examines the history of France from the rise of the Capetians in the mid-tenth century to the execution of Joan of Arc in the mid-fifteenth. He takes the evolution of power and the emergence of the French state as his central themes, and guides the reader through complex - and, in many respects, still unfamiliar, yet fascinating terrain. He describes the growth of the castle and the village, the building blocks of the new Western European civilization of the second millenium AD.

In this second volume of the History of France series, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie provides a masterful account of the early modern period combining a compelling narrative with broad analysis of events and wider comparisons with European history.

This is a story of brilliance, order and sophistication, of supreme confidence and great achievement - that begins in uncertainty and ends in iconoclasm.

Revolutionary France is a vivid narrative history. It is also a radical reinterpretation of the period, and testimony to the power both of ideas and of personality in movements of the past.

This outstanding book, winner of the prestigious Gobert prize of the Academie Française, will unquestionably become the standard history of modern France. The book opens with the impassioned years following the establishment of the Republic, and the introduction of democratic values and civil freedoms. It describes the brilliance of the Belle Epoque, its wholesale destruction during the First World War, the disillusionment of the 1920s and 1930s, followed by the fall of France to Germany in 1940. In his account of the Occupation and the Vichy regime, the author examines dispassionately the vexed question of collaboration, guilt and resistance. The final part of the book tells of the mixed fortunes of the Fourth Republic, the triumphant return of De Gaulle, the accelerating process of decolonization, and the near-revolution in 1968. It describes the role of France in the European Community, the growth of the economy and confidence under Giscard and Mitterand, and recent signs of discord among its varied cultures and peoples.