The complete online text of Catherine De Medici by Honoré de Balzac.

Had Balzac been a less masterful novelist, the disreputably profligate fraud in him might have overwhelmed his artistry. Still, the other Balzac, the artist, is tainted by his well-earned reputation for what has been called artistic license or dishonesty...

The French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was the first writer to use fiction to convey the total social scene prevailing within one country at a particular period in its history. Commonly regarded as the founder of social realism, he also...

Catherine de Medici A Biography Leonie Frieda Weidenfeld & Nicolson 440pp 20 [pounds sterling] ISBN 1 84212 725 X RELIGIOUS FANATICISM IS ALL THE RAGE TODAY. Donald Rumsfeld's 'old Europe' is reawakening to the power of religious belief for good...

UNHAPPY THE land that is torn apart by religion. In the 100 years from 1560, the Reformation plunged first France and the Netherlands, then Germany and Britain, into a long succession of civil wars. The French wars of religion, which lasted nearly four decades,...

Today is Saturday, Jan. 5, the fifth day of 2008. There are 361 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Jan. 5, 1896, an Austrian newspaper reported the discovery by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen of a type of radiation that came to be known...