The Rose of Versailles and the Guillotine

In 18th-century France, the Palace of Versailles was a giant cage made of marble, gold and lies. On the surface, this is a beacon of European civilization—candlelight illuminates silk skirts, perfume masks body odor, and minuets drown out wails of hunger. But in fact, this is a precision-designed "reality show stage" in which the king is the producer, the nobles are the actors, and the 30 million French people are the audience who are forced to pay but cannot enter.