The Ancient Regime

Who granted France’s clergy, nobles, and king their privileges—and how did those privileges come to shape an entire society?

In the France before the Revolution of 1789, authority rested on an old hierarchy: the clergy served spiritual and cultural life, the nobility bore military duties, and the king governed. Hippolyte Taine traces how these roles and their privileges took root, hardened, and shaped the lives of a nation. His inquiry follows the distance between what each class was meant to do and the power it came to hold. As inherited rights press against a changing political world, what strains will the ancient order be unable to bear?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.