Societal issues All books

Anasthasia Blanché
The Odyssey of Retirement: A Private and Collective Adventure
A sociologist’s point of view on a new phase of life that will concern ever-more people.

Sébastien Soriano
The Future of Public Service
A decisive contribution to thinking about the sovereignty of society in the face of the era of networks and the digital world.

Guillaume Cerutti
The Cultural Policy : A 21st Century Challenge Twenty Proposals
Though our certainties may waver as we move toward an uncertain economic and social future, culture remains for France an exceptional asset and a critical issue, both at home and internationally.

Serge Tisseron
The Benefits of the Image
Should sex and violence be banned on our television screens ? Is there a danger that their presence can lead to them becoming common-place, or to delinquency ? In light of this current debate, Serge Tisseron argues that as soon as we become accustomed to a type of image, and it ceases to upset us, we invent another type which will once more allow us to confuse image and reality, and thus to shiver again with fear and anxiety. In a society which is flooded with images, it is thus essential to use them as best we can, and to avoid the dangers that are inherent in them. This book aims to contribute to this end. Serge Tisseron is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, doctor of psychology and research fellow at the University of Paris-X. For the past fifteen years, he has worked on the relations that viewers have with different types of images.

David Guilbaud
The Meritocratic Illusion
David Guilbaud forcefully and with great talent dismantles the meritocratic illusion that enables a justification of an increasingly selective and unequitable educational system.

Maurice Tubiana
Education and Life
This book is a reflection on the alarming fact that France has the highest level of violent deaths (from suicide, drugs, and road accidents) in all Europe among young people between 18 and 22 years old. Tubiana analyses the pleasure principle which runs through our culture and our values, the Freudian principle that demands the immediate satisfaction of our impulses. This brings him to denounce postmodern individualism which does not make any room for the collective interest. Maurice Tubiana is a world-reknowned oncologist and member of the French Academy of Science and the Academy of Medicine.

Louis Crocq, Sophie Huberson, Benoît Vraie
Managing Crises
In the existence of any group, business or nation, a crisis is a serious, uncommon event that suddenly imposes an emergency situation and the management of the vital issues at stake.

Barbara Polla
Women Who Break The Mould A book about women for women
A gallery of emblematic portraits of mould-breaking women, among them one of the great explorer Alexandra David-Néel whose motto was "Go where your heart takes you and follow your eyes." A campaigning work that will allow every one of us to break free of our shackles and to each make our contribution, as best we can, to a more open, more harmonious and more loving society.

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?

Anne-Marie Kermarrec
Digital Technology, Counting with Women Preface by Gérard Berry
An incisive and informed assessment of the complicated relationships between women and the digital world, accompanied by strong measures and precise solutions to put an end to the sub-feminization of this still very macho sector.

Alain Peyrefitte
The Economic "Miracle"
The 20th century has been marked by the growing awareness of the unbearable gap between developed and under-developed countries. And the most outstanding fact of the next century will probably be the worsening in this imbalance. In order to find a solution to the under-development scandal, Alain Peyrefitte attempts to understand the miracle of development. He examines the successive miracles which have allowed a part of humanity to pull through the turns of dictatorship or anarchism, violence and destitution.

Barbara Polla
The New Feminisms Struggles and Dreams in the Post-Weinstein Era
New light shed on feminism by a woman involved in the women’s movement. To find oneself in a galaxy of feminist currents. A reflection on the status of women.



