The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle

I've been reading so much about the American Revolution and early U.S. history over the last year that I needed a serious overview on the concurrent French Revolution, a surprisingly large gap in my knowledge of history.  This volume by William Doyle, albeit dry in tone, fit the bill nicely.

Two courses of thought struck me throughout the book:

1. The Revolution quickly escalated from a successful struggle for constitutional reform to a pan-European war in the blink of an eye.  The source of this escalation was nothing more than the greed of the victors - a scene often repeated throughout history.  Once the revolutionaries deposed Louis XVI and established the constitution they sought, the new French leadership decided that wasn't enough.  Their next goal, that of abolishing monarchy across Europe, forced every such throne to unite in the attempt to destroy republican France.  The result was 10 years of brutal war, involving more than a million deaths and large scale destruction.
2. The American perspective on the French Revolution - at least the Cliff Notes version from this amateur historian - involves little more than the storming of the Bastille.  Although an important event in the history of the early Revolution, its equivalent in the American Revolution would be the Battle of Bunker Hill, or little more than the first day of a protracted war on a global scale.  The French Revolution continued for a decade beyond the storming of the Bastille, involving many millions of people in dozens of countries across perhaps every continent but one.  We Americans, including this student of history, need to dig much deeper.

And glad I am that I did.  As I embark upon a deeper dive into early 18th century American history - with a heavy emphasis on the presidency of Thomas Jefferson and his strong connections to the French and its revolution - my perspective on those events will have added clarity and richness.