Review Date: 1/13/2013

I'm interested in this period, but the author's constant efforts to phrase everything in a "clever" way are very distracting. After a chapter or two, I got tired of trying to sift through the wit for actual content.

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Review Date: 7/31/2010

Good introduction to the Dreyfus affair, a complicated business in pre-World War I France. Evidence is found that an officer in the French military is selling information to the enemy (Germany), and Alfred Dreyfus, a solid but not personable officer (and incidentally the only Jew in the General Staff) is suspected and accused. The evidence against him is a bit scanty, so some more damning evidence is manufactured, and Dreyfus is disgraced and condemned to imprisonment on a solitary tropical island. Gradually, evidence emerges that the wrong man was convicted, but the French military refuses to reconsider it's verdict or concede any errors of judgment. It seems better that an innocent man be condemned than tolerate any challenge to military authority. Eventually, the issue becomes a divisive national political scandal, eventually drawing international attention as well.

The documents chosen for the book help to illustrate the pervasive anti-Semitism of continental Europe, where Jews make convenient scapegoats for the challenges of a rapidly modernizing society; it also helps to illustrate the consistently volatile character of French politics.

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Review Date: 4/24/2013

Tabloid style popular history, written by an academic tourist - not a serious Medieval or Renaissance scholar. Brain candy. I lost patience with it after a few chapters.

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