(Part 3) Best historical france biographies according to redditors

Just found it at Amazon -- Leap into Darkness: Seven Years on the Run in Wartime Europe.

I'll be picking this one up soon.

It's definitely a hard what-if to figure out how the Revolution would've played out without French involvement, but it's hard to overstate the size of France's assistance.

According to The Great Nation by Colin Jones, France's involvement in the Revolution cost the French government about 1 billion livres (all borrowed, and at 8-10% interest rates), which was approximately two-and-a-half times the entire annual French budget in peacetime. The French budget situation was already dire before the war (how dire is a matter of some debate) but it became essentially hopeless afterwards. This fiscal crisis was one of the direct causes of The French Revolution later in the 1780s (pages 310-321).

As far as the war effort goes, it's definitely possible that the patriots may have prevailed without French assistance, but it wouldn't have happened in the same way. The seige of Yorktown, resulting in the decisive surrender of Cornwallis, certainly wouldn't have been possible without French naval assistance.

Especially considering that French involvement in the war had almost no direct benefit for France (other than messing with England), their enormous assistance was basically an act of generosity. So, as an American, thanks France!

You could start with David Macey’s The Lives of Foucault; James Miller’s The Passion of Michel Foucault; and Didier Eribon’s Michel Foucault.

Edit: I forgot Tom Roach’s Friendship as a Way of Life: not biographical, but has many insights into Foucault’s private life.

Back to answer the rest of that question. :) As I mentioned in the earlier post I linked about Marie Antoinette, male infidelity was almost a given among the upper class, but was much less common for women. It was much more difficult for a woman to get away with an affair due to pregnancy, even though early forms of condoms and other birth control were known to exist. Once a woman produced a few children, and especially a male heir for her husband, she was more free to look at extramarital options. While many women did have affairs that their husbands were perfectly fine with, these were very specific cases of high society women with enough fortune and power to get away with it. It was also largely a matter of culture; no princess of the incredibly strict Catholic Spain in the 1700's would dream of an affair. They were forced to wear black veils over their heads and faces in public to protect their purity, similar to burqas today. On the other hand, across the border in France, the high society culture was so flippant about extramarital affairs that a French aristocrat could proclaim to his wife upon catching her in the midst of lovemaking with another man: "My dear, you must be more careful! For what if anyone but I had caught you!" (I wish I could remember who uttered this hilarious quote, but for the life of me, I can't seem to find it at the moment.) If you're really interested in this stuff, I highly recommend either "The Sun King" or "Love and Louis XIV"; they both read like entertaining fiction and go into the juicy details of royal and aristocratic marriage at the French court.

I assume you're mostly looking for novels, right?

You might know Antoine de Saint-Exupery as the author of The Little Prince, but he was also one of the pioneering pilots of the early days of airmail, and wrote several short novels about flying. My favorite is Flight to Arras, but Night Flight is also worth checking out.

I've recommended Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey so many times that I'm surprised I haven't developed a reputation, but it's along similar lines, and well worth the read.

If you're into books that depict the darker side of life, there are a lot of great shorter books in roman noir and roman dur territory. Check out James Cain's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, or Georges Simenon's Tropic Moon.

If you'd like a bit of historical true crime, I'm in the middle of City of Light, City of Poison: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393239780/

These books "The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte" and "The Rule of Napoleon Bonaparte" are good sources I think. Easy to read, full of information, and fairly cheap.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Of-Napoleon-Bonaparte/dp/0465048811/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369056236&sr=8-1&keywords=rise+of+napoleon

http://www.amazon.com/The-Reign-Of-Napoleon-Bonaparte/dp/0465004822/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

She wrote a biography

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tomorrow-Be-Brave-Memoir-Foreign/dp/0743200020

I'd recommend Fatal Purity a general overview of the French Revolution but linking everything to Robespierre.

I think you might like The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury. It's a different take on history with modern day crime investigation involved. Totally intriguing.

This book might interest you- http://www.amazon.com/Legion-Lost-Experience-American-Foreign/dp/0425202836

Francis Poulenc's correspondences are really interesting. You can find them all here in this book:
https://www.amazon.ca/FRANCIS-POULENC-SELECTED-CORRESPONDENCE-1915-63/dp/0575050934