Need suggestions on a non-fiction book...

[hmsch4me]

(reader) - maybe a good biography on someone/something prior to the French Revolution (not American). Any thoughts?

[Sebastian (a lady)]

(reader) - maybe a good biography on someone/something prior to the French Revolution (not American). Any thoughts?

1066 The Year of the Conquest
How the Irish Saved Civilization
Longitude
Ripples of Battle (ok, only a third of the book fits the time period)

[Faithr]

How about Boswell's Life of Johnson? That started the whole biography genre. Thought it wasn't published until just after the French Revolution, it details the life of someone who lived in the years leading up to it.

I've read the first three books listed above and they are all good! Also I'd recommend A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman about the plague in the middle ages. Another good one by Dava Sobel (who wrote Longitude) is Galileo's Daughter.