4896. France in the Age of Louis XIII and Richelieu, by Victor-L. Tapie translated and edited by D. McN. Lockie (read 18 Jan 2012) This is an excellent study of the time, 1610 to 1643, in France. The author is a French historian and first published the book in 1952. He died in 1974 which is when the English translation was published in Britain. The author does a good job showing that absolutism may have been helpful to France as a nation, although certainly not to the ordinary people of France. And the author shows that Richelieu was a very able man and Louis XIII was lucky to have him. Certainly the history of Europe would have been very different if Richelieu had not been running France in the years involved. ( )