This work investigates the nature of mortality and social instability in Paris during the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution. Richard Charles Cobb, a renowned historian of the French revolutionary period, utilizes the specific records of the Basse-Geôle de la Seine to reconstruct the lives and deaths of individuals who passed through the city's morgue. By analyzing these administrative documents, he argues that the mundane details of death provide a unique lens through which to view the social fabric of a society in transition.

Historians frequently cite this text as a foundational example of micro-history and the use of administrative archives to illuminate the lives of the marginalized. Readers often note the dense, scholarly nature of the prose and the meticulous attention to archival detail.