Olivier Bernier: 9 books

". . . [A] behind-the-scenes peek at Versailles . . . and an account of a fraught mother-daughter relationship. . . . [A] graceful guide . . ." - The New York Times. This fascinating and poignant collection of letters between Marie Antoinette, the doomed dauphine and future queen of France,...

Historian Olivier Bernier draws an indelible portrait of the man who represented, more than anyone else, the idea of French nobility to all Americans of the early Republic and who represented to the French the idea of freedom and its American expression. Lafayette was, indeed, the hero of two worlds....

"Olivier Bernier's richly detailed, engaging, and elegant books offers a splendid refresher course on a pivotal moment in world history - the dawn of the modern era." - Francine du Plessix Gray. In the year 1800, almost everyone lived very much as their ancestors had, going back countless...

Louis XIV - the Sun King or Louis the Great, as he was also known - ruled France with an iron fist for over half a century, from 1651 to his death in 1715, outliving his son and even his grandson. His court at the Palace of Versailles became the most dazzling on the Continent, and through his intelligence...

"Only those who lived before the Revolution know how sweet life can be," Talleyrand wrote, many years before the event. Those who dip into Olivier Bernier's lively pages will discover just how sweet, how deep the pleasure, how precious the privilege. For he has populated this book with real...

The hallmarks of the eighteenth century - its opulence, charm, wit, intelligence - are embodied in the age's remarkable women. These women held sway in the salons, in the councils of state, in the ballrooms, in the bedrooms; they enchanted (or intimidated) the most powerful of men and presided over...

Acclaimed art historian and Metropolitan Museum of Art lecturer Olivier Bernier brings vividly to life the dramatic, little-told stories of the great princes and princesses of Renaissance Italy - men and women named Borgia, Este, Farnese, and Medici.

"History as it ought to be written." - The New Yorker. Louis XV lived an enchanted life. He had extraordinary good looks, absolute power, spectacular palaces, and the total grandeur that only eighteenth-century France could provide. The French people adored him and called him "the beloved."...

This book is a unique history of the French Revolution - a colorful, insightful, and impassioned recounting of the events that signaled the birth of modern France and, indeed, the modern world. In the space of just a few years, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette descended from immense popularity...