The Road from the Past

The human drama of French history comes vibrantly alive as medieval historian Caro, who has driven many times from the Roman ruins of Provence to Napoleon's Arch of Triumph in Paris, re-creates the places she saw and the historical events connected with them. With her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert A. Caro, as traveling companion, she takes us inside Roman villas, fortified medieval cities, royal castles, abbeys and Baroque palaces. Her delightful blend of travel, history and pithy observations on French culture unfolds chronologically with historic tales of love, murder, political intrigue, treachery and selflessness. Along with Joan of Arc, poet-prince Charles d'Orleans and extravagant Nicholas Fouquet, Louis XIV's embezzling finance minister, we meet astonishing figures such as Foulques Nerra (``Black Falcon''), the war-mongering 11th-century Count of Anjou who obtained a large segment of the Loire valley--the dowry of his first wife, who he burned at the stake. Then he married another heiress to win control of more of the valley. (Sept.)