Catalog All books

Étienne Guyon, Jean-Paul Troadec
From a Bag of Marbles to a Heap of Sand
Why don't sand dunes collapse? How does sand flow in an hourglass? How is it possible to empty a silo of all its wheat? What's a ceramic? The answer to all these questions can be found in the science of the complex organizations of matter, a science which is pluridisciplinary. Étienne Guyon, head of the École Normale Supérieure, and Jean-Paul Troadec, a researcher, present the characteristics of grain matter, the rules by which it is organized (in both crystal and fluid) as well as its movements (in silos as in avalanches).

Janine Mossuz-Lavau
The French and Politics An Investigation of a Crisis
Are the French really discouraged and depoliticized? Janine Mossuz-Lavau decided to go into the field, to interview the people and give them a voice. What are they suffering from? What do they want? What do they believe in? These are the questions that she attempts to answer after having questioned men and women of all ages and social backgrounds, from all regions and personal affinities. Political analyst Janine Mossuz-Lavau is a Research Director at CNRS and the National Foundation of Political Science.

Jean-Denis Bredin
A Comedy of Appearance
A beautiful woman fascinated by her body, excludes herself from the world to love herself better... Two lovers tear each other apart after promising to always tell the truth to one another... Both cruel and funny, these short-stories describe the unease of a society, ours, which is dying of appearances, a society where everyone, man and woman, resembles what he she would like to be. Narcissism, lies, selfishness: the foundations of happiness are quite fragile nowadays. Through these acid portrayals, Jean-Denis Bredin, a lawyer and a writer, member of the French Academy, evokes a new era of suspicion.




