Catalog All books

Hubert Montagner
Child and Animal The Emotions Which Liberate Intelligence
What could be more commonplace than the emotional ties that some children develop with cats and dogs or other pets? And yet, nothing could be more surprising than the fact that such ties, which are sometimes very close and intense, can exist between members of very different species. The author traces the long history of this co-evolution, from the early domestication of animals for economic ends (such as warning or defence) to the keeping of animals as pets. Above all, he asks the question: What if animals contribute significantly to childrens psychological and emotional development? Professor Hubert Montagner heads a research unit of INSERM.

Alain Braconnier
How to Be a Parent love and common sense
The new art of parenting, or how to reconcile love and common sense from infancy to adolescence

Anka Muhlstein
Balzac at Table
A luminous essay of “literary gastronomy” for food lovers as well as for anyone interested in the nineteenth-century novel

Sylvie Cadolle
Being a Step-parent The Recomposition of the Family
More than one million children in France live permanently or occasionally with a step-parent. What place does a step-parent hold in the family of a child whose parents are divorced or separated? What role does he or she play? Is it sufficient to know how to love in order to succeed in reconstructing a family? This is the first French investigation into the relations between step-parents and step-children that allows both the adults and the children to freely express themselves. Sylvie Cadolle teaches philosophy and educational sociology.

Jean-Paul Betbèze
French people's economic fear
France has economic possibilities, but it remains blocked in several areas. Although the country's leaders are aware of this, they seem unable to make the necessary reforms to move forward. France seems to be the prey of fears that paralyse it, but which have benefited a new class of economic as well as social rentiers who constitute a powerful economic, ideological and political group. These new rentiers are fully cognisant that the defence of their acquired privileges is not a practical long-term solution - as has been shown by rising deficits, decreased competitiveness and job losses. The author argues that it is necessary to make changes and implement reforms - and to do so it is essential to understand and overcome existing fears. It cannot be expected that everything will be changed at once, but some initial efforts must be made. The single reform that will fix everything does not exist, he says, but this is hardly an excuse for refusing to make a start. In other countries, programmes for economic reform are being implemented. Yet France is only beginning to consider such reforms. The object of this book is to provide a greater understanding of the present situation, in the form of a how-to manual. A ruthless analysis of some of France's psychological blocks, apprehensions and economic fears, this book can be regarded as a sort of economic psychotherapy. In addition, the author provides a critique of the false solutions that hinder modernisation and proposes his own solutions for change and reform. Jean-Paul Betbèze is a professor of economics at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas and a member of the French prime minister's Council for Economic Analysis. He is a consultant to the president and the C.E.O. of a major bank and the author of Les Dix Commandements de la finance, which was awarded the Risques-Les Echos Prize in 2004.

Michel Raymond
Why I Didn’t Invent the Wheel
Between nature and culture, a fascinating, widely accessible book about human evolution

Lionel Naccache
On Being a Subject in Oneself The Talmudic Experience of Spirituality
What does it mean to be oneself? What does it mean to believe? An exploration of the neuroscience and philosophy of subjectivity

Élisa Brune
A Heavy Heart Reflections on Cioran
This moving text on existential suffering is an invitation to read or reread Cioran

Jean-Marie Bourre
Chrono-dietetics
For an optimum absorption of the nutrients our bodies require we must pay close attention to our biorhythms

Olivier Spinnler
Living Happily With Others A New Approach Of Human Relations
An analytical, thought-out, conscious and active approach to human relations.