Catalog All books
Serge Renaud
A Healthy Diet
It is possible to eat in a manner that reconciles the demands of staying slim, good health, and general well being - although the steady stream of unhealthy and sometimes dangerous slimming diets would tend to make us believe otherwise. The new health diet proposed here draws much from traditional Cretan eating habits - which seem to be responsible for the populations tenaciously long life. Crete has the highest life-expectancy rate, and its people have the lowest incidence in the western world of cardiovascular diseases, that scourge of the industrialised nations. Serge Renaud is the scientist who discovered that wine can play a role in protecting against cardiovascular diseases - a finding that has become known as the French paradox. After spending much of his career in the United States, he directed a research unit of INSERM (France) for twenty years.
Irène Théry
Modern Relationships and the Family The response of the law to the transformation of the family and the couple
The melting pot where each individual is formed, but also the nucleus of communal life, the family is today a crucial institution of society. However, the current statistics show less, and later marriages, in addition to an increase in divorces and in reconstructed and one parent families, with young people becoming autonomous later as a consequence of these changes. In the face of this, what points of reference should be taken in order to construct the indispensable family policies needed by our country ? With regard to filiation, parental authority, marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and the inheritance and protection of children, how do we adapt the law to these new social realities ? Irène Théry, a sociologist, and author of Démariage, presents in this work an analysis of the state of the family and of private life today, and puts forward the foundations of a new and ambitious step for France.
Antoine Danchin
The Delphic Boat What Genomes Tell Us
What is it that constitutes the unity and identity of a living creature ? This is the fundmental question of biology. The recent sequencing techniques provide a completely new response to this question, notably thanks to the knowledge of whole genomes. Antoine Danchin establishes a clear picture of this important biological discovery. He shows in particular that, just like the boat of Delphi, life is beyond prediction, and at the same time has an infinite capacity to create the unexpected. Antoine Danchin is the director of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the Institut Pasteur.
Aldo Naouri
Girls and their Mothers
According to the author, a powerful current of violence flows between daughters and their mothers.
Collectif
The Judicial System as a Public Service
Should the judicial system be reformed ? This question is at the centre of lively debates. It is to institutions such as the chancellery, courts of law and magistrates, that it falls to forge the judicial system, the deliverer of order, equilibrium and social cohesion. However, these institutions seem today to be weak, both in terms of organisation, and in methods of recruitment. It is thus necessary that changes are made. This is especially so as the duty of the judicial system is to operate in such a way that all individuals remain citizens, by delivering them judgements in a reasonable timescale which are certain to be respected. In this respect, it is a public service. The objective of this book is to assess the forms and the effects of a decisive reform in order to benefit our society.
John Cleese, Robin Skynner
Life and How to Survive It
In Life and How to Survive It, the authors have given us more than 400 pages of lively, tonic humour. Their subject is the joy of living and the conditions required to enjoy life to the full. Proceeding by ever-larger concentric circles, the authors successively discuss happy families (brilliant!), companies that allow their employees to fulfil themselves, and finally countries where life is pleasurable. This is British humour at its best, brilliantlyand hilariouslyillustrated. British comic actor John Cleese is famous for the cult television series Fawlty Towers, which he co-authored and starred in. Robin Skynner is a psychotherapist specialising in group therapies.
Françoise Salomon
Silent Child The Story of a Schizophrenic
This largely autobiographical book recounts the story of a family brutally shaken their sons violence and mental illnessthough nothing had previously seemed to distinguish him from other teenagers. It is a highly moving chronicle of the world of schizophrenia which remains little known by the general public. The mother of a schizophrenic child, Françoise Salomon is an active member of the French Union nationale des amis et des familles des malades mentaux.
Éric Dubreuil
Parents of the Same Sex
A growing number of gay men and women have founded families and are discovering the joys of parenting. It is estimated that there are approximately 500,000 families headed by parents of the same sex. They have brought the issue of homosexual parenting into the public arena, shattering traditional notions of the family and raising fundamental questions of filiation, adoption, and medically assisted procreation (artificial insemination, surrogate mothers) which go beyond the sphere of homosexuality and concern the future of our societyand therefore of all of us. Based on 29 interviews, including seven of children and teenagers, the book explores the little-known lives of same-sex-parent families.
Jean Dausset
A Nod in the Direction of Life The Great HLA Adventure
Jean Daussets finding that white blood cells play an active role in immunization won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine and opened a new area of biological investigation, both in pure and in applied research. The HLA system harbours a unique peptide which may be regarded as the essence of the self in opposition to everything else much as the pineal gland was regarded as the seat of the soul by Descartes. The distinction between the self and the non-self is an essential one in immunology where an individuals defensive system must fight off foreign bodies while at the same time defending his or her own system. In his book, Jean Dausset recounts the story of his discovery and introduces the reader to other fascinating aspects of his life and work.
Léo Bersani
Homos Reassessing the Identity
What does it mean to be homosexual today ? Is it necessary to form communities and if so, why ? Is the primary aim equality in society such as it is, or the challenging of society itself ? Up to what point do homosexuals distinguish themselves ? Must there be a link between sexual claims and political dispute ? The gay and lesbian communities necessarily ask themselves these questions. On a wider scale, they also encourage a redefinition of the human being in contemporary societies. Already considered a classic in the United States, Homos presents an innovative, critical reflection on identity and the dangers in the withdrawal of a community from society. An expert in French literature, Leo Bersani is a professor at the University of California. He has notably published Baudelaire and Freud, and Theory and Violence.