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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.
Éric Molinié
Alive !
How a handicap can be turned into a driver to surpass oneself and to engage with the service of others. An illustration of what is ethical in life.
Rita Levi Montalcini
Against All the Odds
What do Primo Levi, the author of one of the most powerful accounts of life in a Nazi death camp, and Max Delbrück, one of the founding fathers of molecular biology, have in common? The answer is that they--as well as the others described in this book--were able to face the trials and tribulations of their lives with exceptional courage, and without losing their sense of humanity. Through a series of portraits, drawn with great warmth and restraint, Rita Levi Montalcini recounts the course of several exemplary lives. Rita Levi Montalcini taught neurobiology at Washington University for thirty years.
Émile Biasini
Africa and Us
Economist Charles Gide once described colonization as "a force of nature." Biasini believes that to imagine that our current phase of decolonization actually is an end to colonialism is just another manifestation of our society's megalomania. Africa today is going through a phase of change. It must stay faithful to its roots, digesting all the various cultures which have influenced it, while facing a new colonial menace. Its own elites, once fled abroad, have returned to Africa and are quickly becoming the colonists of their own countries. And such colonial ambitions, history teaches us, must inevitably lead to imperialism. Emile Biasini was a civil servant in colonial Africa. Under De Gaulle, he helped found the Ministry of Culture.