If you're a history buff who doesn't have time to read an 800-page tome with a ton of footnotes, this coffee-table style history of the French Revolution may be what you're looking for.

That's not to say VOICES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION doesn't do an admirable job covering all the bases. For instance, there's a section on the guillotine, believe or not, the result of humanitarian reform. Previously, criminals were burned alive or had their bones broken with an iron bar, then were tied to a wheel to die.

VOICES also profiles all of the major players from Louis XVI to Lafayette. We witness Lafayette help draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man, then flee France when the Revolution turns against him, ultimately spending time in a Prussian prison.

Many primary sources are included, such as Louis XVI's valet's eye witness description of the royal family's life in prison. A transcript of Louis Capet's (the king) interrogation by the president of the Convention is also provided. Later we see Marie Antoinette, gray at thirty-seven, on her way to the guillotine, facing death with courage and dignity.

Just browsing VOICES OF THE REVOLUTION is fascinating. Many of Jacques-Louis David's paintings bring the narrative to life and occasionally the reader stumbles across a truly fascinating account, such as the description of the dechristianization of France, during which time Sans Culottes destroyed religious shrines, stripped churches of statues and often turned them into stables for their horses and we watch as the radicals abolish Sunday and Christian feast days.

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