As we approach the end of what might be considered another pretty terrible year, it’s worth being reminded that every age has its tribulations. In Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris, Peter Brooks – Ivy League professor in comparative literature, and author of Henry James Goes to Paris (2007) – takes on a year in the history of France known as l’année terrible, a year whose physical and psychological violence would, once again, reopen the scars left by France’s revolution of 1789.