Catalog All books

Paul Rabinow
French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory
This book offers some surprising viewpoints: an anthropologist tells the story of the human genome sequencing project; a scholar of the humanities follows the crisis between a French laboratory, the Centre dÉtude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH), and a U.S. rival; an American intellectual describes the politics within the French scientific community. This exceptional survey of the most recent research trends and of the state of international competition in the field of genetic research gives us a notion of how our future health care is being prepared. Paul Rabinow teaches anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Paul Bernard
In the Name of the Republic
"Being a prefect is to do a job that comes with demands and responsibilities which are often not recognised. It is equally to accept a mission - that of representing the Republic. It is also adapting to the contradictions of the modern world." Paul Bernard Paul Bernard, a legal expert, has had a long prefectoral career which took him to various regions of France, including Aveyron, Sarthe and Corsica, before becoming the prefect of Rhône-Alpes and president of the Association du Corps Préfectoral et des Haut Fonctionnaires du Ministère de lIntérieur.

Colonel Passy
Colonel Passy Memoirs of the Chief of the Secret Services of a Liberated France
These two volumes constitute a new edition of Colonel Passys memoirs, which were first published by Plon in a three-volune limited edition (Deuxième Bureau-Londres; 10 Duke Street-Londres; Missions Secrètes en France). The new edition has been presented and annotated by historian Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, a specialist in the period. André Dewawrin, alias Colonel Passy, headed the Bureau de Contre-espionnage, de Renseignement et dAction (BCRA) of the Free French in London, from 1940 to 1944. He became General Koenigs chief of staff, in 1944. A former student at the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique, he headed the department of research and study for the French Ministry of Defence after the war.

Nathalie Blanc
Animals in an Urban Environment
Those of you who live in an urban centre, do you think the rightful place of the animal is in the countryside ? Do you think that dogs are simply kept at the whim of lonely citizens ? That cats should not be allowed to roam the streets ? That there should be no more cockroaches to invade homes ? Yet, do you really want a city without nature ? Without green areas, but also without animals ? A sterilised city in other words.. Nathalie Blanc analyses here the role of the animal, and thus the living, in our urban societies. Nathalie Blanc is a researcher specialising in urban geography, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Michel Cassé
The Genealogy of Matter
Atoms originate in the stars. There is no real separation between the Earth and the sky, and matter forms one great whole, based on a series of nuclear reactions. Written in a lyrical, poetic style, this is a concise, clearly illustrated account of the birth of matter, aimed at the general reader. Michel Cassé is an astrophysicist and researcher at the CEA and the Institut Astrophysique, in Paris. He is the author of Du Vide et de la Création and La Petite Etoile.

Claude Olievenstein
Drugs, Thirty Years Onwards
Thirty years after the publication of Il n'y a pas de Drogués Heureux, Claude Olievenstein recounts his exceptional career and summarises his current views on a number of social issues that have been his prime concern for many years: drugs, teenagers and the problems of the underprivileged living in housing projects. This is a frank survey of society in state of crisis. Claude Olievenstein is the head doctor at the Centre Médical Marmottan, in Paris, and a world-renowned specialist in the treatment of substance addiction.

Jerome Kagan
Three Seductive Ideas
Do the first two years of a childs life really determine his or her future development? Are human beings, like other primates, solely motivated by the pursuit of pleasure? What can be concluded today about the notion of temperament? Is it stable and unchanging throughout life? This book is the culmination of a lifetime of research. Jerome Kagan, one of the founders of modern development psychology, is known the world over for the precision and originality of his work, as well as for his overall examination of the methods and meaning of psychology. Jerome Kagan teaches at Harvard University. He is the author of several works on psychology that are regarded as classics.

Jacques Andréani
America and Us
Discussions about the U.S. tend to be heated, both in France and within America itself. To see this issue clearly, it is necessary to move away from a stereotypical vision, created by prejudice. What we notice immediately is the image of success and power, but also continuing tensions, unresolved dilemmas, and a problem in cooperating with the rest of the world. Politics, economy, religion, relations between individuals and communities, the law and the role of the judiciary, social and racial fragmentation : these are all themes dealt with in this book, with a view to ending misconceptions and to take us beyond the old Franco-American misunderstandings. Jacques Andréani was Frances ambassador to the United States from 1989 to 1995.







