Madame De Pompadour: Sex, Culture and Power

How you take the story of Madame de Pompadour and make it painfully milquetoast I don't even know but it's been accomplished with aplomb. Poorly organized (lots of jumping backward and forward in time cut in with sections that begin to broach interesting subjects that are abruptly snapped off with, “but more on this later” like a bad television cliffhanger) and given to promulgating easily debunked pieces of historical nonsense (ie: Athenais was not using witchcraft; no one who spends more than 12 minutes researching Athenais thinks she actually indulged in black magic; come on, seriously?) and dourly written. A book about sex and intrigue and power and intellectual romance in France that lacks all of the above. Except for the Frenchness. Loathe it. Save your money.