This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition? includes a glossary and reader?s notes to help the modern reader contend with Dickens?s complex approach to the human condition.Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities remains one of Western literature?s most powerful stories of sacrificial love, redemption, and the devastation spread by obsessive justice. Having fled Paris for the relative safety and security of London, Dr. Manette, his daughter Lucie, and Charles Darnay are irresistibly lured into a whirlwind of events that threaten to shatter their lives?until a hopeless drunkard remembers the promise he once made to the only woman he ever loved. Dickens originally published A Tale of Two Cities in weekly installments, ensuring that his readers would return to read each new segment. The collected chapters have continued to excite and move readers for over a century.