August 3, 2001

'Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths Under the French Revolution'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Rewarding strong-stomached readers with a riveting tale, Antoine de Baecque's Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths Under the French Revolution (Routledge) limns the era at a visceral level.

True, bodies are nothing new in histories of the revolution. From Marat in his bathtub to unlucky thousands on the scaffolds, we know to expect beaucoup blood with our liberté, égalité, fraternité. But the historian's work is less about counting corpses than corpses that count