Anyone who cares what life was like in the Rhineland under the French revolutionary armies will already know about this book, and probably is more qualified than I am to say what is so great about it. I can say that it's passionately argued and vividly illustrated, with first-person accounts, for example, of all the unpleasantness of being occupied by an undisciplined, hungry, often corrupt revolutionary army. It really puts in context the "German Jacobin" movement and later Rhenish liberalism, and draws useful contrasts and comparisons with the reception of the revolution elsewhere in Europe. ( )