For an intro, yeah, I'd echo everyone mentioning Vive la Revolution by Mark Steel, but, as has also been mentioned, it's entirely accurate...mostly, if I remember right, he just relies a bit too much on apocryphal anecdotes and simplifies things a lot. But it's intended to be accessible to the general public, so the latter point is almost a given.

You can find the links to the memoirs mentioned by victoriavandal on the comm.'s profile page (http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/profile). :)

If you read the novel A Place of Greater Safety, I would recommend that you be very, VERY careful with trusting anything Hilary Mantel writes about the Duplay family, Saint-Just, or Le Bas. They've more or less been set up as two-dimensional villains in the book for reasons I can't begin to fathom, so...yeah.

And I would answer with a resounding "No!" to your last question. :D