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Review title: Novel Masquerading as Bad History
Product review: Readers need to remember that this is a historical novel, not straight history - whatever the author's pretensions. Besides over-idealizing Talleyrand (perhaps to serve the author's own obvious political biases made clear in the Foreword), the book has many gross historical errors of fact that I wouldn't tolerate in a sophomore term paper - and that could have been avoided simply by careful fact-checking. P. just doesn't seem to take history seriously. (The list of reference sources at the end has many more items on antiques, fashion, and architecture than on political or diplomatic history.) As for the writing, some of it is on the level of a teen-age romantic novel, and elsewhere it changes to an ordinary historical narrative - so it's not always clear just what authorial voice one is hearing. This is very sloppy history indeed - the author should stick with Tom Clancy. (I'm a professor of history in Portland, Oregon.)
