It’s hard to offer new insight on a book written 80 years ago but I can at least offer some advice to the casual reader: this is not a crash course about the French Revolution or even a holistic book about France during that era. If you were like me and approaching this book years after it was covered in school, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with things like the timeline of the revolution, the beliefs of the Jacobins, Girondins, Sans-Culottes, etc and the political climate of Europe before the Revolution. Also, if you don’t speak French, I recommend looking at some of the French names or places on paper because you may have a hard time remembering them otherwise. Personally, this book read as a never ending footnote but one that I learned a lot from nonetheless.