Societal issues All books
Paul Milliez
My Hopes
How does a traditionally-educated Catholic become a committed doctor? How do the resistance, the fight for abortion and against all forms of intolerance, intimate relationships with world leaders from General de Gaulle to the Shah of Iran and travels from Liban to Saudi Arabia, combine to create an extraordinary personality? A worldwide specialist in arterial hypertension, Paul Milliez (1912-1994) was the honorary dean of faculty at Broussais Hotel-Dieu.
Catherine Bonnet
A Gesture of Love Giving birth anonymously
Why do some women give birth anonymously so that their child is instantly adopted? A pedopsychoanalyst, Catherine Bonnet recounts the heart-breaking testimonies of these suffering women whose single gesture of love is to protect their child from the violence within themselves. A fresh look at the foundations of maternity and of filiation. Catherine Bonnet is a pedopsychoanalyst.
Étienne-Émile Baulieu
The Generation of the Pill
After meeting Gregory Pincus, the inventor of the pill, E. Baulieu, a young researcher and hormone specialist, found himself at the heart of one of society s most burning controversies: contraception. This is his story; his own contribution to contraception, RU 486, the first contragestive pill, and his reflections on the ethical debate it provoked.
Irène Théry
From Marriage to Divorce Justice and Private Life
Can dual parental responsibility outside marriage be recognized as a principle by law? I. Théry believes that all controversies on divorce are basically debates on marriage. Our representations of the relationships between the individual and society, the private and public realms, are destabilized in this insecure period of unmarriage . The psycho-social drift of justice increases further when we consider the true sufferers of divorce court battles: the children.
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?
Geneviève Delaisi de Parseval, Pierre Verdier
Nobody's Child
Adoption and medically assisted procreations reflect the same suffering and ask the same questions. In both cases, the institution, in the name of a mistaken conception of filiation, weighs upon the children's head with an absolute secrecy as to its biological origins. The authors show in this book the consequences this secrecy has upon the psychology of children and parents.
Christian Jacob
The Key to Fields Agriculture is no longer what you think
Is our agriculture moribund and our farmers condemned? Not necessarily. Christian Jacob's work tells the story of the path taken by a young farmer, while taking a critical look at both French and European agricultural politics and the snares of GATT. He argues that, rather than protect the rural world, it is necessary above all to help modernize it by providing methods that allow for increased income and sharpened competiveness. Christian Jacobs was the President of the Centre National des Jeunes Agriculteurs. He is currently a deputy in the European Parliament.
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.
José Moraïs
The Art of Reading
José Moraïs analyzes the different methods with which we learn to read and presents the various therapeutic possibilities offered to those who do not master the art of reading .
Claude Olievenstein
Written in the Mouth
"The mouth is beautiful. Everything starts with the mouth, from the first scream to the first sucking, from the first love kiss to the last farewell kiss. It is possible to view it only as an obscure hole or a devouring machine. It becomes more difficult when, from the labial to the short syllabe, it shapes itself as an instrument for language or music. Then, new questions are raised, especially regarding its relation to the cerebral systems." Claude Olievenstein