Examines the history of fourteenth century Europe as background to the life of Enguerrand de Coucy VII, one of the most prominent French knights of that time.

Shares the story of a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century social chronicler, from her early years among the French and British nobility to her first-hand witness to such events as the demise of the French monarchy and the Reign of Terror.

The untold story of the extraordinary queen Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily, who championed Joan of Arc.

"A rich portrait of a compelling, complex woman who emerged from a sheltered rural childhood into the fraught, often deadly world of the French royal court and Parisian high society--and who would come to rule them both"-- Marie de Vignerot was intended to lead an ordinary aristocratic life, produce heirs, and quietly assist the men in her family rise to prominence. Instead she was married off at sixteen to a military officer she barely knew, became...

Picture-book biography of little-known musician Joseph Bologne Saint-George.

"The Last Libertines, as Benedetta Craveri writes in her preface to the book, "tells the story of a group of young aristocrats living in the last days of the French monarchy, when it was still possible for the members of the elite to reconcile a way of life based on status and privilege with a belief, born of the Enlightenment, in the necessity for social transformation and the new ideals of justice, tolerance, and civility." Here we meet seven emblematic...