Catalog All books
Jean-Louis André
At the Heart of Urbanity
What should be done about neglected suburbs, the bedroom towns, dehumanized, and deregulated ? When we are faced with buildings in ruins, with wasteland and concrete deserts ? The answer is to stop trying to fix the obvious defects of these surburbs and instead concentrate on the heart of the town, in the common space, which must take on the changes made and symbolise an identity. Jean-Louis André, graduate of the Ecole normale supérieure, is a journalist. He has notably published with Ricardo Bofill, The Spaces of A Life.
Françoise Héritier
Two Sisters and Their Mother The Anthropology of Incest
The author explores the taboo regarding the incest of the second type which concerns blood relations of a same sex who share the same sexual partner. She makes us understand that the categories which we use to determine what is incestuous and what is not are founded on representations of the identical and the different, which are themselves derived from the difference in the sexes.
Jean-Marcel Jeanneney
Out of a Job
For the past twenty years France has been slipping into unemployment. This evil, which is becoming more and more serious, is leading our country into decline, and is threatening our democracy. After having described the difficulties resulting from the new world environment, the author discards the false solutions, such as intensified inflation, devaluation or protectionism. He then outlines the daring, but realistic policies he sees as necessary not only in France, but also for a more dynamic European Union. An economist, Jean-Marcel Jeanneney was a minister for seven years under the presidency of General de Gaulle. In 1980, he created the French Economic Research Institute, which he ran until 1990.
Robert Barbault
Whales, Bacteria and Man
The most prodigious mystery of life might well be in the means it has used to create so much diversity with so little matter. However, taking the risk of destroying the most precious ecosystems, Man inflicts to Nature deforestation, pollution, sea walls and many other acts of violence. This book explores this profusion of life of which human beings are one of the components as well as one of its pivots.
Édouard Zarifian
The True Paradises in Your Head
Nowadays, we are not entitled to be sad without being told: this is a disease . Consequences: instead of receiving love and friendship, the distressed person receives a medicine which deepens his solitude. Édouard Zarifian, a well-know psychiatrist, argues against the abuse of psychotropes in prescriptions and warns us against a society ready to normalize emotions.
Jacques Fricker
Cookery for Slimmers For Your Figure and Your Health
To eat well, is first to put some equilibrium in our daily diet. It is also to accomplish all kinds of small gestures which protect our line and good shape without avoiding a simple, savoury cuisine. Jacques Fricker gives here a recipe book which will put neither our health nor our weight in any danger.
Manès Sperber
Being Jewish
A non-practicing Jew, Manès Sperber learned to read the Bible at the age of three and continued to re-read it until the end of his life. Neither religious, nor a militant Zionist, nor an aethiest, nor aligned with any cultural Judaism, he professes as his only faith a "religion of good memory." His is a Judaism lived as humanism and as an ethic, as a refusal of all idolatry, of exclusion of others, and a constant combat against hate of any kind. It is a profound attachment to the Israelite nation and a prudent attitude towards the State of Israel that Sperber illustrates in these brilliant essays prefaced by Elie Weisel, where analysis of Jewish thought and identity walk hand in hand with the eternal question: Why anti-semitism?
Pierre Bergé, Yves Pomeau, Monique Dubois-Gance
From Rhythm to Chaos
From the physics of particules to astronomy, from chemistry to biology, chaos is present in most scientific fields. Three specialists of this subject have undertaken, through many examples, to extract chaos from the scientific world in order to show how strong is its hold on our daily lives.