Toward the Brink

kicker Books
Phoebe-Lou Adams None

by Claude Manceron. Knopf, $20.00. The fourth volume of Mr. Manceron’s history of the French Revolution is as lively, as tart, as detailed, and as populous as its predecessors. It covers the affair of the queen’s necklace, among much else, but does not get beyond the convening, in 1787, of the Assembly of Notables. That group will explode in the next volume, which can hardly come too soon.