John Merriman, who received his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, teaches French and Modern European history. His books include The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France, 1848-1851 (1978); The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (1985), published in French as Limoges, la Ville Rouge (1990); The Margins of City Life: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier (1991), French edition Aux marges de la ville; faubourgs et banlieues en France 1815-1870  (1994); A History of Modern Europe since the Renaissance, 2 vols. (1996; second edition 2002, third edition 2009); and The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (2002), available in French as Mêmoires de pierres: Balazuc, village ardéchois (Paris, 2005), and in Dutch. His edited books include 1830 in France (1975); Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1979); French Cities in the Nineteenth Century (1981); For Want of a Horse: Chance and Humor in History (1985); and Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in Early Modern Europe (with James McClain and Ugawa Kaoru, 1994).