The readability of this book is... minimal. If you've ever wondered what an inventory (or a budget, a list of quotes, or a CV/resume) would look like if someone had turned it into a narrative, it would be this. It becomes cumbersome to even focus as you're told the individual wealth of each deputy, of their so-called qualifications, of their (possible) relationship to either Rousseau or Voltaire... It's exhausting, and it would make a great case study of why historians should learn to write for an audience (and I'm saying this as someone who also studied and taught history).

It's frustrating because a lot of the information could be interesting, but you have to slog through a lot of stuff that could've been better outlined as a table or a chart.