This book is absolutely no pique-nique de bois. It is 500 pages of scholarly text with lots of references that had me looking up people, places and events. So it would be a nice idea to keep a smart phone handy.
The interesting thing is that the prose which are supposed to exemplify the best of French writing of the period have been translated into English. I would have preferred the original French version as I can enjoy many examples in French. Hence I strongly recommend to people who has a good command of French to get the French version that was published several years ago.
And here is a nice except for the people who are too busy to read the full text, it's 18 pages introduction and I think it's indeed worth reading.
http://assets.nybooks.com/media/doc/2011/06/21/When-the-World_Spoke-French-Introduction.pdf
