"Philip Mansel's book is poised to become the new standard English-language biography of Louis XIV, one that takes into account the revolution in the last fifty years in knowledge about every aspect of the king's reign: the army; Catholicism; diplomacy; the arts; music; medicine; homosexuality at his court; the role of women and the publication of the entire correspondence of his second wife, Madame de Maintenon. This is a global biography of a global king, whose power on the French monarchy and state was large but also limited by laws and circumstances, and whose interests and ambitions stretched from the eastern frontiers of his territory, which he enlarged to what is essentially France's shape today, to the territories along the Mississippi and Mekong rivers. Through it all, we watch Louis XIV progressively turning from a dazzling, attractive monarch to a belligerent reactionary who sets France on the path to 1789"-- Provided by publisher.