About the book: 2016 / William Stearns Davis, professor of history at the University of Minnesota, talks in his book about the most important events of the two thousand-year history of France, starting from the ancient Gauls to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Thanks to its conciseness and richness of information, this overview of many centuries of the life of the country becomes a fascinating excursion into the times of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the reign of Henry IV and Louis XIII, the reign of Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV with the ideas of enlightenment and the greatest writers and scientists of France at that time. The revolution of the late 18th century, the proclamation of the republic, Napoleon's empire, the Bourbon Restoration, the monarchy of Louis Philippe, the Second Empire of Napoleon III, the republic again and the First World War... The author does not always manage to maintain the impartiality that is usually required of a historian, but this only adds book of interest, attracting readers who study or are interested in the history of France and Western Europe in general.