History and politics
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Robert Cole A Traveller's History of Paris. This brief history of the city from the first Celtic settlement to the present day is an ideal starting point for those wishing to delve into the historical archives.

* Duc de Saint-Simon Memoirs. Written by a true insider, this memoir of life at Versailles under Louis XIV is packed with fascinating, gossipy anecdotes. Be warned: even the five-hundred-page tome currently in print is a mere abbreviation of the duke's massive original journal.

Christopher Flood & Laurence Bell (eds) Political Ideologies in Contemporary France. Beginners' guide to the current political trends in France.

Norman Hampson A Social History of the French Revolution. An analysis that concentrates on the personalities involved. Its particular interest lies in the attention it gives to the sans-culottes, the ordinary poor of Paris.

Christopher Hibbert The French Revolution. Good, concise popular history of the period and events. The Days of the French Revolution. Compelling account of the details, complexities, personalities, and events surrounding the French Revolution.

* Alistair Horne The Fall of Paris and Seven Ages of Paris. Highly regarded historian Alistair Horne's The Fall of Paris is a very readable and humane account of the extraordinary period of the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870 and the ensuing struggles of the Commune. The Seven Ages of Paris is a wonderfully compelling account of significant episodes in the city's history.

Colin Jones The Cambridge Illustrated History of France. A political and social history of France from prehistoric times to the mid-1990s, concentrating on issues of regionalism, gender, race and class. Good illustrations and a friendly, non-academic writing style.

Peter Lennon Foreign Correspondents: Paris in the Sixties. Irish journalist Peter Lennon went to Paris in the early 1960s unable to speak a word of French. He became a close friend of Samuel Beckett and was a witness to the May 1968 events.

Lissagaray Paris Commune (o/p). A highly personal and partisan account of the politics and fighting by a participant. Although Lissagaray himself is reticent about it, history has it that the last solitary Communard on the last barricade – in the rue Ramponneau in Belleville – was in fact himself.

* Philip Mansel Paris Between Empires. Serious but gripping tale of an often-ignored patch of Paris's history: the turbulent years of revolutions and restorations that followed in the wake of Napoleon. Brilliantly conjures up the events of the streets and the salons.

Karl Marx Surveys from Exile; On the Paris Commune. Surveys includes Marx's speeches and articles at the time of the 1848 Revolution and after, including an analysis, riddled with jokes, of Napoléon IlI's rise to power. Paris Commune – more rousing prose – has a history of the Commune by Engels.

Robert Rowell Palmer Twelve Who Ruled. Another account of the French Revolution, so readable it is almost entertaining.

Angelo Quattrocchi Beginning of the End: France, May 1968 (o/p). First-hand account of the disobedience of students that sparked the riots of factory workers and finally revolution, from the pen of an Italian journalist stationed in Paris to cover the events as they unfolded.

Orest A. Ranum Paris in the Age of Absolutism. A truly great work of city biography, revealing how and why seventeenth-century Paris rose from medieval obscurity to become the foremost city in Europe under Louis XIV.

Paul Webster Pétain's Crime: The Full Story of French Collaboration in the Holocaust. The fascinating and alarming story of the Vichy regime's more than willing collaboration with the German authorities' campaign to implement the "final solution" in occupied France, and the bravery of those, especially the Communist resistance, who attempted to prevent it. A mass of hitherto unpublished evidence.

* Theodore Zeldin A History of French Passions, 1848–1945. French history tackled by theme, such as intellect and taste – a good read.