The New York Review of Books

Who Are ‘The French’?

December 6, 2007

The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War by Graham Robb

A Capacity for Impudence

April 26, 2007

Beaumarchais in Seville: An Intermezzo by Hugh Thomas

The Love of a Pessimist

December 21, 2006

Leonard Woolf: A Biography by Victoria Glendinning

Lost in Translation

November 16, 2006

The Charms of Selfishness

June 8, 2006

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius by Leo Damrosch

Cultivating Voltaire’s Garden

December 15, 2005

Voltaire in Exile: The Last Years, 1753–78 by Ian Davidson

Candide, or, Optimism by Voltaire,translated by Peter Constantine, with an introduction by Diane Johnson

Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire,translated by Burton Raffel

‘The Scientific Takeover’

September 22, 2005

The Scientific Takeover

May 26, 2005

Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years by Charles Coulston Gillispie

Body and Soul

April 29, 2004

Flesh in the Age of Reason by Roy Porter, with a foreword by Simon Schama

What Adèle Knew

October 9, 2003

Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne edited and with an introduction by Anka Muhlstein, and an afterword by Olivier Bernier

‘Their Noon, Their Midnight…’

June 12, 2003

The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715–99 by Colin Jones

Men in the Moon

December 19, 2002

The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World by Jenny Uglow

The Art of Malice

November 15, 2001

Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, with Jean-François Fitou, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer

A Royal Mystery

February 8, 2001

The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette by Chantal Thomas, translated from the French by Julie Rose

Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France by Evelyne Lever, translated from the French by Catherine Temerson

Epic-Making

November 30, 2000

Barbarism and Religion Volume 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737-1764Volume 2: Narratives of Civil Government by J.G.A. Pocock

Dreams of the Body

May 25, 2000

Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David After the Terror by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

Brave New World

February 24, 2000

France in the Enlightenment by Daniel Roche, Translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer

Tocqueville’s Lament

April 8, 1999

The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville, edited by François Furet, by Françoise Mélonio, translated by Alan S Kahan

Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins During the French Revolution by Patrice Higonnet

The Hack of Genius

December 3, 1998

Daniel Defoe: The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures by Richard West

Portraits of a Lady

March 5, 1998

Women’s Words: Essay on French Singularity by Mona Ozouf, translated by Jane Marie Todd

A Finished Woman

January 15, 1998

The Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott, Introduction by Shirley Hazzard, afterword by Richard Dunn

The Pleasures of Reading Hogarth

December 18, 1997

Hogarth: A Life and a World by Jenny Uglow

The Analysis of Beauty by William Hogarth, edited with an introduction and notes by Ronald Paulson

Hogarth and His Times: Serious Comedy by David Bindman

A Simple Facilitator

July 11, 1996

Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions by Lloyd Kramer

Love à la Mode

May 9, 1996

The Love Affair as a Work of Art by Dan Hofstadter

Allowing for Mme De Stael

April 18, 1996

Call Me Madame

December 21, 1995

Delphine by Germaine de Staël, translated and with an introduction by Avriel H. Goldberger

The Time of Her Life

October 19, 1995

That Mighty Sculptor, Time by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Walter Kaiser

How Many Years by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Maria Louise Ascher

A Blue Tale and Other Stories by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Alberto Manguel

Marguerite Yourcenar: Inventing a Life by Josyane Savigneau, translated by Joan E. Howard

Nothing Sacred

June 8, 1995

The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France by Robert Darnton

The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769-1789 by Robert Darnton

Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France by Arlette Farge, translated by Rosemary Morris

Little Women

March 23, 1995

Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1832 by Stella Tillyard

All About Eve

November 3, 1994

Madame du Deffand and Her World by Benedetta Craveri, translated by Teresa Waugh

Mysteries of Mallarmé

September 22, 1994

A Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stéphane Mallarmé by Gordon Millan

His Mystic Way

July 14, 1994

Amorous Initiation: A Novel of Sacred and Profane Love, An Excerpt from the Memoirs of the Chevalier Waldemar de L—— by O.V. de L. Milosz, translated by Belle N. Burke

Marshmallowing

January 13, 1994

On Love by Alain de Botton

Leave it to Chance

November 18, 1993

Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France by Thomas M. Kavanagh

Looking for Napoleon

October 22, 1992

The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys, translated by Patricia Clancy. the author

The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P. by Brian O'Doherty

The Emperor’s Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena by Julia Blackburn

Napoleon: An Intimate Account of the Years of Supremacy produced and edited by Proctor Patterson Jones

A Double Life

June 25, 1992

Chamfort by Claude Arnaud, translated by Deke Dusinberre, foreword by Joseph Epstein