John S. C. Abbott’s biography of Louis XIV traces the Sun King’s extraordinary seventy-two-year reign — the longest of any major European monarch — from his minority under Mazarin through the personal rule, the construction of Versailles, the wars that dominated Europe, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the long twilight of the later years. Abbott presents Louis as both a genuine statesman and a man of insatiable vanity whose wars ultimately bankrupted France.
Written for a popular American readership and part of Abbott’s Makers of History series, this is an accessible and engaging introduction to Louis XIV and the age of absolutism.