Catalog All books
Serge Renaud
A Healthy Diet
It is possible to eat in a manner that reconciles the demands of staying slim, good health, and general well being - although the steady stream of unhealthy and sometimes dangerous slimming diets would tend to make us believe otherwise. The new health diet proposed here draws much from traditional Cretan eating habits - which seem to be responsible for the populations tenaciously long life. Crete has the highest life-expectancy rate, and its people have the lowest incidence in the western world of cardiovascular diseases, that scourge of the industrialised nations. Serge Renaud is the scientist who discovered that wine can play a role in protecting against cardiovascular diseases - a finding that has become known as the French paradox. After spending much of his career in the United States, he directed a research unit of INSERM (France) for twenty years.
Pierre Karli
The Brain and Freedom
What is the relationship of man with the world, the others, with himself? To this perpetual question, many answers have been given by the various, religious or philosophical systems of thought. Pierre Karli, a neurophysiologist, proposes to look in the direction of science. He shows, by synthesizing the most advanced scientific works, how individual freedom finds its roots at the very heart of the brain.
Colin Powell, Joseph E. Persico
My American Journey
Colin Powell is the incarnation of the American dream. Born of Jamaican parents, he lived a tough urban life before embarking on a brilliant career in the army, then at Washington. The rest is history. The man who was once at the head of the United States Armed Forces, and is today one of the most important figures in American politics recounts his progression in life : from the dangers of Vietnam to the garrisons of Korea, from the deep South to the corridors of the Pentagon and then the White House, under Reagan and Bush, at the time of the Star Wars, Irangate, and the Gulf War. With the collaboration of Joseph E. Persico.
Nathalie Zajde
The Children of the Survivors (New Edition) The Transmission of Trauma to Jewish Children
"I have terrible nightmares and I would like to know if other children of survivors have the same dreams as me. I think it is crazy to have never lived through the war, yet have these extremely precise dreams." In Jewish families, why do the children of those who escaped Nazi extermination often have the same dreams as their parents, even though their parents have never spoke about the traumas which they lived through ? Reinforced by cleverly recounted stories, this book describes precisely what is called the survivors syndrome, an illness which manifests itself through nightmares, feelings of intense terror and desertion, a particular and incurable annoyance, recurring memories, and unfounded fears. It demonstrates that, thanks to the techniques of ethno- psychiatry, it is possible for these children of survivors to take back their place among the living. Clinical psychologist, and master of conference at the University Paris VIII, Nathalie Zajde is also a researcher at the Georges Devereux Centre.
Petr Skrabanek
The End of Humanitarian Medicine
Medicine is at a crossroads. Traditionally, practitioners helped patients who came to them looking for support, for something to alleviate their suffering. However, the progress which has been accomplished in the last few decades has changed everything. Doctors now claim to be fighting death itself, they believe medicine to have almost limitless powers, and they try to prevent illness by changing behaviour. From this point onwards, our entire existence becomes overmedicalized. In the name of health at any price, doctors now dictate, prescribe and legislate whilst forgetting the essential meaning of their job : to help and to care. A violent criticism of contemporary medicine.
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
Norbert Rouland
The French State and Pluralism A Political History of Public Institutions from 476 to 1792
Has France become a multicultural society? Are we heading towards a dislocation of French unity, or a more advanced form of democratic life due to this pluralism? Can we invoke the French tradition which has given us several reference points? These are the serious questions which History must confront, and it is the aim of this history of public institutions to do just that. The author shows that the French State has constructed the Nation through a stronger voluntarist policy than found in most other Western European countries. His clear yet detailed style makes this book accessible to a wide readership, both those wishing to know more about the origins of our current political regime, and also to first year students, to whom this work represents a source of valuable information.
Robert Rochefort
A Consumer Society
This book demonstrates how with households equipped and individuals saturated, consumption must respond to other, more immaterial needs. The new markets are those which can reassure people : healthcare, ecology, land, family and even solidarity.
Massimo Piattelli Palmarini
Retraining Judgement How to avoid fooling yourself
How can we reason more effectively ? Everyday, we solve countless problems and take decisions by trusting our intuition, our common sense. Often, it is not only our passions, our emotions that lead us astray, it is the mind itself which tricks us, without us even being aware of it. How can we avoid these traps ? By driving out into the open, with the help of Massimo Piattelli Palmarini, the natural illusions and unconscious mechanisms which occupy our minds, and by working to help our judgement in the same way as psychoanalysis works to improve our emotional lives.
Guiliana Gemelli
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel is considered as one of the major historians of the XXth century. Making his stand against factual history, he was one of the founders of the triumph of new history: the history of human societies rooted in their geographical space and obstinately determined to produce their material civilization there. This biography takes its strength from friendly conversations between Braudel and Giuliana Gemelli, who because she is Italian, had the necessary distance to make a demanding quest.
Alain Prochiantz
Biology in the Bedroom
Inspiring himself from La Philosophie dans le boudoir by Sade and the major philosophical works of the 18th century, Alain Prochiantz, who is a neurobiologist, explains by means of a dialogue, the progress of embryology and neurobiology and gives us the elements so that we can understand and measure the stakes of the recent discovery of the genes of development. Alain Prochiantz heads the Laboratory for the Development and Evolution of the Nervous System at the École normale supérieure. He is notably the author of Strategies of the Embryo, and Claude Bernard, the Physiological Revolution.
Christian Stoffaës
Public Services A Question of the Future
French public services need to be modernised. In their present position, they incarnate the Welfare State and its grand projects. They are now being challenged by the opening up of the market, the fall of the controlled economy, deregulation, and privatisations. An open economy now rules the network industries, such as energy, transport, telecommunications, and collective services. Can we really just leave isolated and without a future this cornerstone of our society which represents all at once the infrastructure of the competitive economy, great technical achievements, the republican conception of social equality and the cohesion of the country ? A result of the reflections of the Network Plan 2010 group, led by Christian Stoffaës, the director of the company Elecricité de France, this work identifies the currents of change, assesses the situation in other countries, and traces an outline of a significant project to reform the State. In co-edition with La Documentation française.
Libby Purves
How Not to Raise Perfect Children
All parents want to raise exceptional children : well-balanced, healthy, clean behind the ears and gifted for everything...
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.
Ricardo Bofill, Nicolas Véron
Urban Architecture
What is there in common between all my designs ? What meaning can I give today to my architecture ? Without doubt, that of a desire to organise space. Due to an apprenticeship in perception, observation, and geometrisation of nature, in addition to a historical journey, I have learnt that in order to go past the initial momentum, I have to acquire the mastery of a whole new language." Ricardo Bofill Ricardo Bofill is probably one of the most famous, yet most controversial architects of his time. In this book illustrated with pictures and plans, he delivers an analysis of his art which amounts to an invitation to read the city.
Rita Levi Montalcini
Your Future A Nobel Prize which speaks to young people
When a great scientist makes a point of getting through to young people and those around them.... When a Nobel prize brings within everyones reach all the key principles of biology.... When an exceptional woman passes down to new generations the values on which she has based her life.... Science with a conscience ! Rita Levi Montalcini recieved the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Born in Turin, but forced from Italy by the Fascism, she has for many years taught in the United States.
Aldo Naouri
The Couple and the Child
With a first birth, a woman naturally becomes a mother, and, in principle, a man becomes a father...
Jean-Marie Bourre
The Dietetics of the Brain New Edition
How should we eat to think well and work productively? J.-M. Bourre, a neurotoxicologist, celebrates the pleasures of a greedy brain, a gastronomical brain. He takes us on a fascinating exploration of the complex chemistry which links our brain to our plate in the world of proteins, vitamins, mineral salts, and lipids. By providing the keys to proper nutrition, this book shows the way to greater mental awareness, energy, health and fulfilment, while respecting the real needs of both the body and the brain that most crucial organ. Throughout the book, pleasure (adapted to every budget) remains one of the authors main concerns.
Antonio R. Damasio
Descartes' Error Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Being rational is not denying oneself emotions. The brain which thinks, calculates, and makes decisions is not a different entity to the one which laughs, cries, loves, and experiences pleasure and annoyance. The heart has reasons that reason itself is far from being ignorant of. In opposition to the old Cartesian dualism and to all those who wish to reduce the functioning of the human mind to detached calculations worthy of a supercomputer stands the results of the latest neurological research : the absence of emotions and sentiments prevents us from being really rational. Antonio R. Damasio heads the department of neurology at the University of Iowa, in the United States, and teaches at the Institute of Biological Studies of La Jolla.