Versailles

Versailles: A Biography of a Palace by Tony Spawforth, 254 pages

Centered on a chateau used as a hunting lodge by his father, Louis XIV raised a palace that was not only the monument of a man to himself, but also an expression of the political and aesthetic philosophies of the Enlightenment.  Adapted by his successors, Versailles stood as a symbol of the greatness of France, but also as a symbol of the distance between the monarch and his subjects.

While informative, Spawforth's "biography of a palace" is also unfocused and disjointed.  The story jumps rapidly between subjects and time periods, without a central narrative to give a sense of unity.  There's quite a bit of good material, it simply is not organized very well.  The book also has a disappointing scarcity of illustrations for a book on such a visually appealing subject.