One of the quotations on the back of this books calls this, "an engaging study...of one of the more diificult authors of the seventeenth century." I agree with the first part--this book is very well written and interesting--but not the second--it deals with La Rochefoucauld as if he was difficult, which he surely, read carefully enough without any presumptions, is anything but. If you consider the frenchman a philosopher, than he is surely-- with Machiavelli's "Prince" the closest exception--the easiest of the bunch to understand. There is one small gripe that I have: the author includes many quotations of other works, but does not translate them except in an appendix in the back of the book. Hardly a big deal, but still a "deal," making the read rather clunky at times.