If real life can be funny, history should be doubly so. For Mark Steel, the French Revolution was one of the most inspirational moments in human history - a moment when ordinary people changed the world and became extraordinary. Here he strips away the layers of prejudice and preconception to be found in some historians' portraits of the revolutionaries - like Robespierre, Danton, de Sade, Tom Paine, Marat - to get to the people behind the stereotypes and the events behind the myths. This is a humorous and deadly serious account of the French Revolution: what happened, why, and how it could have happened to you. It's a book for anyone who's ever wanted to know what happened behind the storming of the Bastille and the guillotine, when a nation decided that things could only get better.