This book will certainly help you learn.

It starts off easily enough but I wonder how high it goes. No complaining, I got there. Just seems to be a good distance.

This book was excellent for practicing reading and listening comprehension in French. The progression of difficulty over the three sections was challenging but not overwhelming and the definitions in the margin and glossary at the back made it fairly easy to comprehend the texts while learning new words and grammatical constructions. However, this book is definitely not for absolute beginners. I had about 5 semesters of college French before starting this book and found it appropriate for my level without needing a dictionary or referring to the glossary too often. Someone with less French background would likely need to spend more time looking up words and making notes in the book to get the full benefit.

My only complaint about this book is that positive female representation in the second and third parts of the book was noticeably lacking. Joan of Arc was the only female historical figure featured, none of the four short stories were written by a female author, and only one contained a female main character and she was not portrayed that positively. So at one point I found myself thinking, "Wow, have French women ever done or written anything important?". The book is still great for language practice, just be aware of the gender bias in its presentation of French history and literature.

La première partie était un peu ennuyeux mais utile pour comprendre les parties suivantes. La seconde, l'histoire de la France, était assez intéressante et facile de comprendre. La troisième et dernière partie était la meilleure, particulièrement l'histoire de Maupassant, La Parure.

Ce livre n'utilise pas le passé simple, donc on peut immédiatement commencer le lire avec sa connaissance actuelle.

This is a great review of basic French. It begins to be much more interesting on page 66 and following where the readings are about the history of France! So you learn culture and history while you are reviewing your French! C'est formidable!

A great reader for those that have had at least one semester of French.

This is a great book for brushing up on your French if you are an intermediate French student. I would not recommend it for a beginner & I would also not recommend it for someone who is currently in French class as it is a bit redundant, but it is perfect for brushing up between French I & II, which is what I used it for.

Three distinct sections in this reader, at different levels of difficulty.
1. Beginner French, with very simple grammar, but school vocabulary assumed. Progresses through the chapters. Not overly interesting.
2. History. Written in present tense. I enjoyed reading about the ancient history more than the modern. I had read some of these before in Roussy de Sales's earlier publications, where these were separate books. Again, there is quite a bit of vocabulary here.
3. Famous short stories. These include perfect and imperfect tense, so grammatically suitable for the intermediate student. For some reason I don't really enjoy these stories, though I think I understood more of them in my most recent reading than when I read them over 10 years ago in other editions.
There is still quite a vocabulary burden when reading these, so their suitability will depend on how comfortable people are with unknown words, and the size of their current vocabulary.

Readings that steadily increase in difficulty, ended up surprising myself with how well I could follow the stories at the end, although I skipped the Guy de Maupassant one because I've read the English version and thus reading the French one would be cheating-ish.

The app has audio

This is a nice beginner book to practice reading, vocabulary, comprehension, and pronunciation (since I think it's most useful to read aloud when learning a language.) It's also a primer on French history, certainly not complete, but plenty to get you started.

Les conversations entre Julie et Marc dans la première partie de ce livre j'ai trouvé assez intéressants. La troisième section qui s'appelle <> est la meilleure dans le livre entier mais la deuxième partie qui contient l'histoire de la France, je me sens qu'elle est très simplifiée, c'est pourquoi je donne ce livre ne plus que trois étoiles.

I started this book god knows how many years ago and just never finished it. If you are starting to learn French this is a decent resource to use. The stories start out very easy and build, culminating in short stories written by well-known French authors.