This account was first published in 1758, and it was a runaway success. It is an account of Peter Williamson's life. He was kidnapped as a child in Europe and sent to the American colonies. There, he grew up, got himself out of slavery, married and then was attacked and captured by the Indians. Later, after escape, he became a soldier. He describes his adventures during these years, and the account is actually quite adverturesome reading, even somewhat charming as he writes in the antique language of the time. As the title suggests, there are several examples of Indian torture and murder witnessed and described by Williamson in the book; one can see why the people of that period called the Indians "savages." Anyone interested in this period of history will find this book worthwhile...

Those looking for a general overview of the Annales school will find this helpful, and concise. However, more should have been included to present the critics of the school and its methods.

This rather brief book is a useful short introduction to the French Revolution. As a work of original scholarship it is not on the order of William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution, though it is better footnoted than that volume. As a defense of "traditional," "Marxist" "non-minimalist" interpretations of the French Revolution as an important event that fundamentally changed France and the world for the better, McPhee's book does not go much beyond the chapters he devoted to the subject in his previous Social History of France.

Nevertheless this is a helpful book. His chapter on the breakdown of the old regime, if it does not vindicate the idea of a class conscious bourgoisie confronting the aristocracy, does note the increasing rise of capitalism and consumer culture. The bourgeoisie did triple in size over the eighteenth century, and increasing literacy, readership and Enlightenment ideas did have a middle class component. There were increasing attacks on the aristocratic "luxury", while middle class sociability increased in institutions like freemasonry. McPhee also provides information about recent areas of interest like gender and even more so on the environment (more than 70% of the people who took advantage of the Revolution's law on divorce were female). He also provides interesting details, such as how the Right Wing Press in the early 1790s started attacking the revolutionaries as Jews and how their bloodthirsty language encouraged the panic that led to the September Massacres. Ironically, at the height of the Paris Terror of Spring-Summer 1794, the Convention reinstated more than 70 Gironde sympathizers whom Robespierre had saved from trial and execution.

In conclusion, McPhee argues that the Revolution was an important event in French history. It had clear effects on demography, as contraception spread and the birth rate fell, on language, as more and more people spoke French (only half did in 1789) and in the decline of churchgoing. Although still important, the nobility clearly suffered a loss of influence, while the bourgeoisie gained and even the peasantry improved. McPhee might have quoted Paul Spagnoli's 1997 article in the Journal of Family History which noted a decline in mortality rates unmatched in Europe. But this is still a useful introduction to people otherwise unfamiliar with the French Revolution.

Reading _Hermes in Paris_ is like looking at the stars through a telescope. They glitter, but are distant and ultimately, cold.

Set just before and during the beginning of the collapse of Napoleon III's empire, this book has tremendous potential for plot action. Which is unfulfilled, apparently as a conscious literary conceit. The author doesn't even tell readers what happened to the major characters, either the famous ones whose fate is recorded in history or others who are probably fictional. Well, he does give some (welcome) hints in the Afterword, but this is not the same as incorporating a real ending into the book. The characters fail to come to life or engage the reader's concern. The book's conceit is that the political collapse was engineered by Hermes, the trickster god, for no reason except amusement. Hermes truly does not care what happens to the human beings he manipulates. While this is probably meant as a comment on the randomness and unfairness of history, the viewpoint of an indifferent god too closely resembles the viewpoint of an indifferent author.

The prose does, as I said, glitter. So if you are willing to read a book mostly for the language, you might like _Hermes in Paris_.

This book is an eye-catcher for any professor. It is very comprehensive and breaks down things which seem very logical to someone who already knows French. As a student of French I found this book to be difficult. Consequently I used other books to learn French. Then I referred to this book to get a more comprehensive understanding. This book has some pretty good exercises.

Useless because it has most unuseful idioms and expressions that are never used in French. It lacks also many basic business WORDS not to mention expressions, sayings and stuff. Out of 30 times I needed to translate a french expression into American, I got: - 20 times the word or expression was just not there - 5 times the examples listed did not apply (mainly because examples are related to finance, not business) - 5 times it was somewhat accurate (but I had to double-check with my american co-workers).

Don't make the same mistake I made believing that since the last edition is pretty recent, a lot would be updated. Save your money and just try something else.