An enthralling work of history about the Libertine generation that came up during—and was eventually destroyed by—the French Revolution.The Last Libertines, as Benedetta Craveri writes in her preface to the book, "tells the story of a group of young aristocrats living in the last days of the French monarchy, when it was still possible for the members of the elite to reconcile a way of life based on status and privilege with a belief, born of the Enlightenment, in the necessit