History and Geopolitics All books
Danièle Voldman
The Mine Clearance of France after 1945
At the liberation of France, the country was covered in mines, planted by the Germans, the Allies and the Resistance during the conflict. The population were fearful of resuming normal life in the face of this danger: France had to remove the mines. Thus in 1945, mine clearance was invented, as before then no-one had any idea how to defuse these weapons of death! Who would be given the heavy responsibility of leading this task ? What did it involve ? What role did the German prisonners of war play ? Danièle Voldman, a historian, is the research director of the CNRS (Institute of Contemporary History).
Robert Darnton
Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
At the beginning of 1778, Franz-Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris where he set about expounding his rather exotic theory - that the universe was swimming in a fluid which was responsible for occurences such heat, light, electricity and magnetism, but it was this fluid's relevance to medicine which he wished to highlight. In order to restablish health and man's harmony with nature he undertook strange healing sessions which became the origins of an extraordinary craze. Quickly, mesmerism became a disguised political theory. In demonstrating the links of mesmerism to politics, and the scientific notions of the age, Robert Darnton provides in this work a decisive contribution to the study of the diffusion of ideas in French society at the end of the 18th century. Robert Darnton is a professor at the University of Princeton
Jean-Pierre Mohen
Rites of the Afterlife
Humans define themselves in the way they relate to death. Funerary rites are the manifestation of this essential relationship to the afterlife
