France

Summary Experience teaches that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform itself. - Alexis de Tocqueville The year is 1789, and you are the King of France. You’d rather be tinkering around in your workshop, but instead you are stuck in this meeting of the three estates and no one seems to be very happy. You inherited the kingdom from your grandfather Louis XV at nineteen years of age. He died a deeply unpopular monarch and left you a kingdom with tremendous financial problems. Still, change is in the air. The Enlightenment has filled France with new ideas; the old world is dying and something new is being born, though it is hard to picture what it will be. There is a lot of criticism of the monarchy these days, and it is coming from both the nobility and the masses. You have often welcomed reform, but there is a right and natural way things are meant to be. Push too hard and something might break. This is why you’ve often retracted unpopular edicts. People call that indecisive, but you’ve always held that public opinion is never wrong. Now here you sit in the middle of the first Estates General in over one hundred and fifty years, listening to everyone air their grievances against the kingdom you rule. A flicker of intuition, a growing sense of doom, as a possibility begins to present itself. You might be the last link in a chain of kings that reaches back one thousand years. ...

Summary This book follows the protagonist Julien Sorell in his attempts to make a name for himself. Julien is the son of a carpenter but has dreams of becoming the next Napoleon. During a period known as the Bourbon Restoration, France is experiencing a brief moment of peace after Napoleon had been defeated and monarchs were back in charge. Julien decides that the only possible path to the glory he seeks is through the church now that Napoleon is no longer around. He soon finds out that in order to climb the ranks of the France elite he must first learn to play their games. ...