If you seek a book on the French history which coincides with the “brief and complete” paradox, then consult now the famous “Carpentier-Lebrun”. If the manner of undoubtedly telling the history with its amateurs with seriously advanced these last years, this book is a still alive example, because regularly updated…
Of course a book of 400 pages on the French history from its origins as far as our days
is inevitably (and fortunately) incomplete, but it offers the advantage of being clear on certain essential points: for example conflicts between the church's authority and that of the King, or disillusions of the French Revolution.
… Briefly, we can better understand times which preceding ours without for being submerged as much by obsolete stereotypes, incomprehensible genealogies or crueler terms still than our ancestors themselves… The appendices of these books are they also a beautiful success:
glossary, genealogy, charts, diagrams are of a great clearness. But this which makes of the Lebrun Carpenter a true book of history, it is also that each chapter comprises historical extracts of texts, as by
example the war of Gaules, of Jules César, the writings of Gregorian de Tours or some named lines “Louis XIV judged by a priest of countryside”… It is thanks to this kind of text that the history takes all its dimension and that one carries out that its interest lies in its comprehension and not in the recitation of dates or events. The History, it is not
Julien Lepers which wrote it!