A militant communist in the thirties, Gilles Martinet is now a leading French Socialist. In this book, he discusses the Popular Front, defeat and the Resistance during World War II, the failure of the colonial wars, the construction of modern socialism and Mitterrand's decade.
Martinet has created a stimulating account of the men that made history, that tried to shape it according to their own values and ideals. He assesses past successes and failures in order to create a socialism that can realistically function in today's world and is far from the vehement ideological disenchantment that fosters the extreme right.