Vincent Lanata

The Days in May that Made History in Fran

The history of France is presented here in an amusing and unexpected way. The final chapter offers a consideration of themes that remain decisive in the life of France: war, Europe, geopolitics, and others.

Arlette Farge

Effusiveness and Torment, The Body as Narrator A History of the People in Eighteenth-Century France

Manès Sperber

The Faces of History

Guiliana Gemelli

Fernand Braudel

Fernand Braudel is considered as one of the major historians of the XXth century. Making his stand against factual history, he was one of the founders of the triumph of new history: the history of human societies rooted in their geographical space and obstinately determined to produce their material civilization there. This biography takes its strength from friendly conversations between Braudel and Giuliana Gemelli, who because she is Italian, had the necessary distance to make a demanding quest.

Israël Finkelstein

The Forgotten Biblical Kingdom

One of the world’s greatest archaeologists reveals what the Bible doesn’t tell us.

Patrick Fridenson, Bénédicte Reynaud

France and the Age of Work (1814-2004)

In this history about working hours in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the authors present two highly original theses which go against some established ideas. Their first thesis is that the limitation or reduction of labour hours was not a political, social or economic issue but primarily a question of public health. The authors’ second thesis is that the movement for shorter hours was never a major demand of the trade unions — since absenteeism served to regulate working hours — but the policy of national and international institutions. This is a history book which responds to an impassioned issue in recent French political events. Patrick Fridenson is a historian. Bénédicte Reynaud is an economist.

Patrick Eveno

The French Daily Le Monde A History of Independence

Jacques Lesourne

The Futures Which Never Happened

The writer’s goal can be briefly summarised: to place himself at different key European dates during the twentieth-century, to assume that we don’t know the future, and then to imagine other conceivable historical outcomes starting with those dates. For the anticipator, the future is not determined. It is the complex product of necessity, chance and will. Lesourne has re-examined about 20 historical events from the perspective of a “retro-forecaster”, casting a new, unexpected light on the past century: for example, July 1914, Saint Petersburg in 1917, Versailles in 1919.... Jacques Lesourne is a former publisher of the French daily Le Monde.