"The Measure Of The World", by Denis Guedj, is a historical novel of a 7-year quest shared by two men and their assistants to realize what Condorcet spoke of with the words at the start of these comments. Their goal was nothing less than the establishment of the true measure of the standard meter. Messrs. Mechain and Delambre spent over seven years, one beginning at Dunkirk the other in Barcelona, triangulating all that lay between them until the meridian had been measured. Before it was over one would nearly die, and many of their peers would fall to the revolution and the likes of Robespierre. While they fought the outdoor elements their colleague Lavosier was establishing the weight of the standard Kilo in a bathtub of distilled river water he had run through sand.

As remarkable as the achievement itself was, the time during which it was carried out could hardly have been worse. The work began with the recommendations of King Louis who would meet the guillotine long before the work was complete. Other figures and revolution would hamper progress as Talleyrand, Robespierre, and Napoleon all made their presence known. Almost daily the men were accused of being spies, royalists, sanscoulettes, sorcerers, revolutionaries, and traitors. Their targets and platforms, critical to their work, were constantly destroyed, at times for firewood, at others because the structures were believed to be military signals.

Mr. Guedj's book is about the factual establishment of the most widely used measures in the world. And while he had access to the letters, notes, and diaries of the men involved and members of various scientific societies, there was no day-to-day narrative to be followed. The book also strays from the primary effort and includes a great deal of history, which was critical to the main expedition. The time that included the, "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen", in 1789, through Bonaparte's coup d etat in November of 1799 are remarkable periods in human history. The author blends the famous task that was carried out while always keeping in perspective the events that hindered more than helped the monumental completion of the task.

The methods and the instruments used were very complex, and while the author does not presume the reader will have a grasp of the math or instruments, he does provide an excellent appendix with illustrations. Even a cursory review greatly enhances the read, and the more time taken to learn the methodology, the more fantastic the accomplishment becomes.

The fruits of these labors are still in a vault that is opened yearly. On the final Friday in September, the 3 necessary keys are brought to open the vault and the platinum meter and kilogram are viewed, their temperature taken, and then closed off from any influence that could alter their shape for another year.

The language in this book is translated very well and is easy to read. I looked everywhere for a book that described daily life in Ancient Rome without going into the girty details of war and politics. This book accomplished all that. I highly recommend "The Roman Empire".

very interesting village in franc

This is the first volume of a multi-author endeavor to trace the changes in private attitudes, beliefs, benaviors, and lifestyles from the early Roman Empire to the late twentieth century. The first volume begins with the early Roman Empire and ends with the apogee of the Byzantine Empire. Containing five lenghty essays by different authors (mainly French -- the whole project is a French one) dealing with the early Roman Empire, the late Roman Empire, housing and architecture in Roman Africa, Merovingian Gaul, and tenth and eleventh-century Byzantium.

The project is a fresh and invigorating look at the ways that societies change. There are several excellent illuminations in this book. We are shown that the notion of Roman "sexual liberation" is not well-founded; that Christianity did not change Western views on sex and the body, but that Christianity adopted the views of the poorer (and more numerous) Roman classes; how architecture can reveal much about a society; and that the major change between the late Empire and the early medieval had to do with notions of "private" and "public."

Although the book is interesting and useful, there are some reasons to criticize it. Most of the attention is given to the early Roman Empire, which consumes almost one third of the book. Entirely too much space is given to the chapter on architecture in Roman Africa -- it is significantly longer than the chapter on the late Empire. The chapter entitled "The Early Middle Ages in the West" is really only about Merovingian Gaul, and does not always have the change between the late Empire and early medieval as a focus. The chapter on Byzantium did not seem to fit with the rest of the book. The reason for including Byzantium in this volume rather than the next volume (Middle Ages) was to show Byzantine culture as a continuation of Roman culture. Unfortunately, the piece was not about the early Byzantine, but rather the middle Byzantine era, thus having no connection with the rest of the book. It is also dubious that the book begins with the Roman Empire, not the Roman Republic or classical Greece. Paul Veyne says that this decision was made because Rome was essentially Greek in character, and that a section on Greece and a section on Rome would be repetitive. This is weak reasoning at best, but, given the lenght of the book as it stands now, it may still have been a good decision. Finally, the book is not footnoted or endnoted. There is a lengthy bibliography and a small notes section in the back, but assertions, ideas, and evidence are not clearly referenced. I do not know if this is how French scholarship is done, or if this major chunk of scholarship was left out in the interest of marketing the book to a lay audience. Either way, it is frustrating, and only hurts the academic value of this major project.

Despite these critical comments, I view the book as an excellent effort and an enlightening read. Too often history is about events, not people, and these historians have made a noble attempt to humanize our past.

This book covers about 1,000 years of private life, from the polytheistic era of classical Rome through the acceptance there and then institutionalization of Christianity in the dark ages. It is a dazzling side glance into the cultural evolution of these tumultuous times with some reference to the larger political context.

The distinctions between these cultures are at once subtle and brutal. First, we view the civitas of Rome, that is, the obligation that Roman citizens felt towards their cities, which involved complex community-oriented mores and expensive public displays that were paid for by private means; aristocratic children, brought up with relatively less sense of their individuality than we enjoy, saw their lives and careers as reflections of the glory of their cities. The reader is also treated to the way that slaves and families were treated in great detail.

Then, in the early Christian era, more privatized cultures arose, first with the increased introspection that the christianization of the empire entailed. Next, the barbarian invasions - in which nomadic tribes smashed the urban cultures in whose wealth they had wanted to partake - merely accelerated this trend; they greatly valued their possessions, often war booty that they had to carry with them, and hence had little regard for fixed property and its supporting laws that enabled cities to flourish. Infrastructure and larger communities and political units in this period deteriorated, which severely impacted trade and hence economic welfare. The standard of measure of a life at that time became purely personal wealth and power.

A sub-theme of the book is the influence of monasticism, which created its own closed communities and became the model for family life at the beginning of the gothic era. Monks and the clergy were the holders of standards of conduct and literacy through this little-known period, and exerted immense influence on the mores of the people who lived nearby. In all its detail, this was new to me. Indeed, if it were not for their labors, much of classical learning would have been lost forever. They are also virtually the only source for information about life in Byzantium.

While there is something lost in having so many authors involved in a single volume, the chapters in this book are so long and detailed that they are like self-contained books. Ample illustrations transport the reader to each era, revealing the mystery of what made us who we are in the west over so many centuries. Nonetheless, the chapters are uneven. The chapter on Roman architecture in N. Africa is very boring indeed, and the one on Byzantium is dull as well. But those on pagan and then Christian Rome are superb, as are those on the dark ages.

Finally, this book relies more on written sources than on archaeology, which is a pity in my opinion, as the sources written after pagan Rome are rather formulaic and outright boring in their rhetorical flourishes as you read about them over hundreds of pages. At times, it reads like a compendium of obscure sources, including exhaustive analysis of funery inscriptions, though that is often what academia comes down to. Another odd thing is that there are only two pages of footnotes, which are followed by a rather poor bibliography. While the book is trying to strike a balance between popular and specialized audiences, I would have preferred better info on sources.

In spite of these criticisms, there is no question that this book is an ample and fascinating meal. Recommended.

The back of the book says that the "History of Private Life" series is "written and edited by leading scholars yet intended for any reader who wonders how people lived and behaved in earlier times". In this, the first volume has definitely succeeded. It is divided into five parts: The Roman Empire, Late Antiquity, Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa, The Early Middle Ages in the West, and Byzantium in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. Each of the five sections is divided into chapters, which are then each divided into portions, each portion with its own heading, for easy identification. So, for example, under "The Roman Empire" is a chapter entitled "Marriage," which is divided into sections headed "Criteria for Marriage," "The Transformation of Marriage," "Marriage as a Duty," "The Harmonious Union," etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed most of the sections, although "The Roman Empire" was a bit too long-more than 200 pages, twice as much as any of the other sections. Often it sounded like the author was repeating himself.

I didn't find "Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa" very interesting, probably because the emphasis was on the Domestic Architecture part. Since the section was based mostly on architectural excavations, it had little information on "private life." Most of the section was overviews of the plans of houses and cities in Roman Africa. Since minor details, like furniture arrangements, often do not survive to be discovered by archeological expeditions, there was little information on such minor details.

The other four parts were much more interesting. The book contains a wealth of information on private life: the way people thought, the way they acted, the way they lived. It is extremely readable. I am not a scholar of the period, but I found the book very easy and enjoyable to read. This simpleness in writing means that a lot of scholarly arguments and debates are left out. The whole text is sort of streamlined. Generally this is a good thing, but sometimes it makes one suspicious of some of the author's statements. On page 224, for example, one illustration's caption reads, "Tomb of a physician, 3rd-4th century. He is not, as was once thought, reading a medical treatise but rather his classics..." Looking at the illustration, the scrolls the physician is reading are blank, with no identification on or around them. How could one decide what the man was reading? The author may have had a reason for making this statement, but without the reason given, I found myself thinking, "For heaven's sake, the man could be reading ANYthing." However, if nothing else, this forces the reader to realize how subjective interpretations of history often are. The editors of this book are to be commended for having included enough information that the reader can make their OWN subjective judgements about how to interpret the evidence.

This book's biggest problem, I think, is its length (600+ pages). The large number of illustrations helps, but this is a book that has to be read in bits and pieces. Luckily, the book is divided in such a way that reading it a piece at a time is the easiest way to read it.

The French title for this book is translated "Saint-Simon and the Court System." Neither title is correct. Le Roy Ladurie has written two books. The first six chapters is a discussion of social hierarchy as interpreted by the duc de Saint-Simon looking at the court of Louis XIV. The last two chapters are a history of the Regency (1715-23). The first chapters contain no narrative history except for a biography of Saint-Simon and the last two contain no social analysis but are a discussion of the political history of the Regency.

To understand much of Le Roy Ladurie's books, the reader should know that the French education system for potential university students emphasizes on exams something called "explication de texte." The student is given a quote by someone (a politician or writer) and maybe a date. The student is expected in an essay to identify the person making the quote and that person's importance, the importance of the quote, and how it relates to history or literature or philosophy or whatever in order to demonstrate the student's knowledge and education. This book like many of Le Roy Ladurie's books is an extended explication de texte. The text in this case is thousands of pages of the memoirs of Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755).

Saint-Simon lived at the court of Louis XIV centering on Versailles starting in 1691 until the king's death in 1715. Then, when his friend the duc d'Orléans became Regent for the five-year-old Louis XV, Saint-Simon had an insider's view of court politics until his friend's death in 1723. Shortly thereafter Saint-Simon was told to leave the court. He was a has-been at age 48 or, more precisely, a never-was. His most important job had been as Ambassador to Spain to negotiate a marriage between Louis XV and a Spanish princess, a marriage that never took place. Some fifteen years after leaving court Saint-Simon began writing his memoirs.

Saint-Simon was an aristocratic prig, a puritanical gossip who believed that, as a duke and a peer of Frence, his class of people deserved the highest honors and positions within French politics after the royal family and its relatives. He described people of lesser social origin as vile nobodies, people from nowhere, and people who did not deserve their positions. He refused to believe that talent could or should allow people to rise in society. He dismissed immorality and corruption, believed illegitimate children were immoral because they were the products of immorality, detested the Jesuits, and despised Louis XIV because the king never granted Saint-Simon his due. The king in one of only three conversations he had with the little duke told Saint-Simon that he had to learn to hold his tongue. Louis XIV could not abide people who chattered incessantly, criticized others openly, or talked about people behind their backs. The king would never pick someone for a position who had so little self-control. Le Roy Ladurie does not mention this story.

Nor does Le Roy Ladurie mention that there exists another source for the end of Louis XIV's reign, the Journal of the Marquis de Dangeau who kept a daily record of events at court from 1684 until his death in 1719. Saint-Simon began his preparations for writing his memoirs by annotating Dangeau's journal, especially anytime the marquis mentions someone. The little duke would then write out as much as he could remember about that person. Although Dangeau has never been published in English, Saint-Simon has had several editions, all of them abridged. The best French editions of his work are thousands of pages long with annotations to explain events and identify people or Saint-Simon's unusual vocabulary. The little duke's style is said to have influenced Proust with its niggling details and loving idiosyncratic descriptions.

Saint-Simon's memoirs are filled with the names of over 10,000 people. They are like an extended phone book with long descriptions of this person or that while the plot takes a back seat. Saint-Simon was an intellectual aristocrat who knew lots of people and, like the Bourbons, he learned nothing and forgot nothing. His memoirs are his revenge for every slight, real or imagined. Yet, in some ways they are the only published source for a lot of the history of this forgotten period of French history. Le Roy Ladurie, however, ignores the history of France from 1691 until 1715 and then gives us eighty pages of political history for the Regency.

Le Roy Ladurie is mesmerized by Saint-Simon's discussion of cabals at court in 1709. He wrote an article on this section of the memoirs over 25 years ago. He repeated his analysis in a series of lectures at Johns Hopkins twenty years ago. Simply stated by 1709 according to Saint-Simon, Louis XIV's court had three groupings: the king's courtiers, his son's courtiers, and his adult grandson's courtiers. Yet, like Saint-Simon, Le Roy Ladurie goes into overtime explaining this person's relation to that one, and how the whole mess worked. The fact that people gathered around the heir to the throne or the heir's heir is not news. It was normal behavior in a monarchical system. Le Roy Ladurie's mistake is to think that the snapshot given in 1709 has an existence that extended into the Regency. Thus, these groups seem like political parties with a life of their own.

Louis XIV had the misfortune to survive both his son who died in 1711 and his grandson who died in 1712. In addition, some of the major personalities in these factions also died. Yet, Le Roy Ladurie goes on about this cabal and that having to be placated by the Regent with no evidence from Saint-Simon to support the claim that these groups maintained any cohesion after 1709 much less sfter the deaths of their leaders.

This book is filled with typos as well as mistakes by the author. For example, he discusses the first known writing of Saint-Simon coming from the death of Louis XIV's daughter-in-law in 1689, except that she died in 1690. He has people living for years after they had died, repeats in the text what he has said in the footnotes previously. I gave this book three stars because it has some value but it is not an exciting read except for those of us who have an interest in this period of French history, one that was recently called "The Black Hole of French History" because so little research or writing has been done on it. In that sense, Le Roy Ladurie has made a significant contribution.

Gossip and intrigue abound in this brilliant new book on the Court of Louis XIV. Leroy Ladurie is simply one of the smartest historians around. He looks at the Sun King's multi-layered and busy court through the lens of the Duke of Saint-Simon (1675-1755), a courtier and phenomenal chronicler of court life who left thousands of pages describing the intrigues, personalities, activities and gossip of life at Versailles. The result is a fascinating portrait of life under Louis XIV, a life driven by hierarchy, rank, and blood. Great book about obsessive, ruthless social climbing at its worst and best.

Although called a "Critical Dictionary", this book does a remarkable job of describing the intellectual attributes of the French Revolution and comparing it with the ideals of the American Revolution. The author adroitly traces the origins of the French Revolution to the Enlightenment legacy and the age of reason. The well-organized chapters elucidate the principle participants, including Robes Pierre, who helped stabilize the Revolution. In fact, this book explains that the Revolution attacked inequality. Consequently, the peasants revolted and the bourgeoisie seized political control. Additionally, the philosophical anecdotes of Hegel and Marx enriched my reading enjoyment. Moreover, the chapter about the American Revolution clarified the uniqueness of the French Revolution in its own conceptual framework. Overall, A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution represents essential reading for a student or general reader interested in the French Revolution.

Pierre Birnbaum's book has an envious quality among history books to transcend describing events by time but rather movements in thought. He describes events from as early as the French Revolution in the same breath as current happenings. He is not shy to express a viewpoint that strongly supports the French model of the Jewish Citizen. Birnbaum is confounded with the destiny of french Jewry because French Jews today do not all share his vision of the Republic. This Americanization of France (multi-culturism, etc.) and the traditions of the Sephardic immigrants frighten Birnbaum slightly, but he does not provide firm answers as to what exactly he is afraid of. The book also covers many overlooked topics through many primary sources.

The importance of the book lies in their accounts of differences in approach to skill formation in two countries - France and Germany. The authors spare the space for reader to answer, which countries has the best systems ?

Germany has a very intergrated appraoch with employer, unions, local and federal governments involved in addressing present and future skill formation. France does not have. He gave a description of both country's approaches and all the different institution involved (societal approach).

He gives a summary at the end of the book.

For a number of years, historians of various backgrounds have attempted to conceptually and operationally define the "Middle Ages." In 'Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages' Jacques Le Goff, a top French Historian outlines his perspective via a collection of essays he developed on this subject over several years.

Le Goff suggests the modern historian should use the techniques of the ethnographer, the findings of archeologists, and the records of courts, commerce, and confessor's manuals to construct the everyday world of the inhabitants of Europe during the Middle Ages. He says he is not going to try to turn the Dark Ages into the Golden Ages, and he is not operating without a theory since that is virtually impossible--in spite of the claims to the contrary by some modern theorists. As he mentions the 'division of labor' in several contexts, I imagine he is following social theories outlined by 20th Century French historians such as Durkheim, Mauss, and Bloch.

Le Goff sets about untangling a story he says began with the fall of the Roman Empire and ended with the Industrial Age ('Longue duree' of Fernand Braudel). He seems to view the Renaissance and Reformation as the natural culmination of forces that arose during the Middle Ages: the division of labor and the division of time.

Le Goff says much evidence suggests a tripartite society arose in the 900s and gained ascendency by the 1200s. This society was composed of: oratores (clergy), bellatores (warriors), and laboratores (workers). Fortunately or unfortunately, the division of society did not end with three groups. He says the Middle Ages involved two major processes: the division of labor and the division of time, and that these two processes were inseparable.

Le Goff spends much time discussing the laboratores and how their work day, which was once measured as sun-up to sun-down (God's time as depicted in the "Book of Months") came to be measured and paid in hourly rates as the result of the growing power of commercial interests. The land-based wealth of the feudal lords and their peasant farmer tenants was subverted by commercial practices that ultimately exploited and alienated the artisan workers. These alienated workers later grew in power and became involved in peasant revolutions and other disruptive activities.

The sections of Le Goff's essays that most fascinated me described the rise of church power at the expense of the "old" religion of the common people. During the Middle Ages, the Church acquired enormous power. The clergy (oratores) were mostly monastics and penitents to begin with, but with the rise of commerce and trade, many of them became mendicants and secular scholars. These scholars lay the groundwork for the reformation and renaissance.

But before the church splintered into the hundreds of protestant groups that came into existence following the reformation, it managed to subdue many of the common folk beliefs. Of particular fascination to me was the recorded history of the demise of the dragon who went from noble beast in the old religion to maligned serpent killed by saints in the new religion. Another section that fascinated me involved the witch. Citing 'La Sorciere' by Michelet, Le Goff says he thought the witch was "productive because she gave birth to modern science....While the clergy and the schoolman were mired in the world of imitation, bloatedness, sterility, and anti-nature, the witch was redicovering nature, the body, mind, medicine, and the natural sciences."

Generally unsympathetic to both Sade and his works, Lever adopts a strongly moralistic stance, preferring the easier way of condemnation to the more difficult task of comprehension. He also seems to be more interested in political history than in Sade's literature or ideas, and unlike Guy Endore and Francine du Plessix Gray, both of whom have the enviable ability to breathe life into the interesting characters who surrounded Sade and bring them before us as real and believable people, Lever lacks this ability, and his biography, though full, scholarly, and up-to-date, might have been a little more lively. Despite its shortcomings, the serious student will want to have this book for the sheer mass of information it contains in its more than six hundred pages, and for its excellent notes and bibliography. Those who prefer insights to mere 'facts' will find themselves better served by Annie Le Brun.

This book was my introduction to the Marquis de Sade. I was expecting (and hoping for) a narrative portrait of the cruel beast so often alluded to in popular culture and vernacular speech, along with a laundry list of his misdeeds. What I got instead was a fascinating life history of a man who was at best a product of his own culture and upbringing, an avaricious, often petty noble, who took the libertinage of many of the members of the Ancien Regime to incredible lengths; at worst he was a captive of his own twisted fantasies, a soul who arguably lacked the even the most basic of built-in moral "stop signs" that most members of society both acknowledge and use as guidance. The most interesting aspect of this voluminous work was the thorough narration of the familial, political and administrative twists and turns that Sade endured during his life. The accurate and detailed accounting of the buildup to the French Revolution was enthralling and unexpected. In summary, if I had thought I was beginning a nearly 600-page history of societal and governmental France, I doubt I would have made it past the Prologue. Having just finished the book, though, I can say that this is one of the most satisfying and informative reads I have ever undertaken.

Donatien Aldonse Francois, Marquis de Sade, had the dubious honour of being imprisoned by three entirely different French governments: the Old Regime, the First Republic, and the Empire. He also nearly survived them all, dying (in prison) in 1814. He wrote a fantastic amount - his first and most notorious book, The 120 Days of Sodom, was inscribed in microscopic writing on a gigantic roll of paper. Lever's biography steers carefully clear of both condemnation and canonisation, presenting the Marquis as an aristocratic anarchist - totally incapable of bowing to authority or of being "useful" in the robotic utilitarian fashion advocated by the Revolutionary authorities. Accused of no real crimes other than "immorality" and a rather trumped-up charge of assaulting a prostitute, he seems to have been incarcerated mostly thanks to the malignancy of his thoroughly unpleasant mother-in-law; and if Lever does not portray him as particularly likeable, he certainly comes across a!s having wit, plenty of principle and more than his share of guts. And it's hard for any writer to resist admiring a man who produced so much of interest under such adverse conditions. Lever has thoroughly studied the Marquis' letters (at one point he gives a hilarious list of the nicknames Sade bestowed on his wife) and the historical background, which makes for a long, fascinating epic, filled like the Marquis' books with power philosophy, lavatory humour and the invigorating crack of the whip.