While academic in tone, The Four Musketeers is an easy and fascinating read. I think my biggest fault is that the font was tiny. The book addresses what is known about the men who inspired the famous musketeers of Dumas, D'artagnan in particular; a brief history of the musketeer units in France, including solid information on their attire and weaponry; about the fictional memoirs Dumas drew from for inspiration; how Dumas went about writing his books (including insights into his use of collaborators); published fan fiction about the heroes; and how the musketeers have been portrayed on stage and film. ( )

Excellent coverage of the men who became the basis of the Dumas classic. Additionally, there's a good deal of information about the origin and exploits of the real Musketeers, along with uniform and weaponry descriptions. The authors conclude with discussion of Gatien de Courtilz (whose Memoirs of D'Artagnan provided the basis for Dumas) and Alexandre Dumas and what happened after The Three Musketeers was published. A well written book. ( )

A very detailed account of the life of Charles de Batz-Castlemore, who called himself Charles D'Artagnan and was the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas' D'Artagnon in The Three Musketeers. Also traces the lives of the three historical musketeers who are portayed as D'Artagnon's companions. ( )

This is a fairly well-researched book telling of the actual persons on whom Dumas based his characters--whose lives were not intertwined as Dumas portrays them. The account of the Dumas books and their subsequent history is of interest, but some things in this book were of little interest to me; e.g., the weapons of the musketeers, etc. Much of the book seemed non-interesting to me ( )