Here is an incomparably rich portrait of France in the years when she was forged into the modern nation state. Ingeniously structured, the book begins with a study of national obsessions and attitudes, proceeds with an investigation of power - who had it and how, who didn’t and why, and what was done with it - and then investigates social identities, from the individual and family to the nation at large. When every aspect of the period has been put under the microscope, Robert Tombs draws them all into the broad political narrative that brings the book to its rousing conclusion. Bursting with life as well as learning, this is, quite simply, a tour de force.