Status Updates From The French Revolution

Whew! Two and one-half hours to make it through 30 pages. Still reading out loud, especially when 'immigrants' are yabbering in their native Eastern European tongues (USSR) or illegals are using the speaker on their cell phone call. In any case the next book I read on the French Revolution will make a lot more sense.

I have to read this baby out loud so I'll slow down enough to be able to comprehend what I'm reading. I don't know what the author did 60 years back to make 'The French Revolution' such difficult reading, but he did it. This book is about the political and social climate and maneuvering around the French an·cien ré·gime circa 1780s, not about the bloodshed. I'm searching for a second book to read about that.

As another reader of Goodwin's 'The French Revolution' has noted; "It reads like a college textbook." Yes. A college textbook written in the middle 1950s, when a K-12 U.S. education was equal to a university's master degree today. Very interesting to learn, how incredibly complicated it was to manage 1780s France with its clergy, aristocrat and commons factions overseen by a "weak and vacillating" Louis XVI.

Very interesting. France's pre-1790 governance and taxation were something to behold. What a mess. Who knew that a prime piece of France's national debt was the appx. 2015 16B (USD) cost of supporting the U.S. battle for independence? In 1788, "the total state expenditure amounted to just under 630,000,000 livres, the interest charge on the public debt alone stood at $318,000,000 livres." Like I said, What a mess.