Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stael Book

From the eve of the French Revolution until the Bourbon Restoration, Germaine de Stael held the limelight as a political power, a philosopher, and an uninhibited heroine. J. Christopher Herold vigorously tells the story of the fierce Madame de Stael, revealing her bold philosophical ideas, her whirlwind affairs with the great intellectuals of her day - among them Talleyrand and Benjamin Constant - her courageous opposition to Napoleon when it seemed that she alone in all of France dared oppose him, and her idealistic rebellion against all that was cynical, tyrannical, and passionless.