PERRIN
january – junE
2016
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reated in 1827, Editions Perrin has, from its beginnings, catered to a readership of history lovers, researchers and teachers. An initial specialty was the publication of the speeches of the Académie Française and early works included those of: Tolstoy, Augustin Thierry, François Mauriac and René Grousset. Today, Perrin is the leading history publisher in France – with a catalogue featuring chronicles and biographies, general syntheses and monographies, memoirs and essays. It offers both highly accessible and more demanding historical works. The paperback collection « Tempus » was created in 2002 and counts more than 500 titles, it is a rich illustration of Perrin’s editorial span and can be said to constitute the history lover’s ideal library.
www.editions-perrin.fr
FOREIGN RIGHTS Rights Director of Perrin Rebecca Byers rebecca.byers@edi8.fr + 33 (0)1 44 16 08 90 Foreign Rights Assistant agathe.bourachot-ext@edi8.fr + 33 (0)1 44 16 09 66
Contents GENERAL HISTORY
ANCIENT & MEDIEVAL HISTORY
6 Lady Scarface
22 Palmyra
DIANE DUCRET
ANNIE & MAURICE SARTRE
7 A History of Walking
23 Carthage
ANTOINE DE BAECQUE
KHALED MELLITI
8 A History of the Couple
24 A History of the Middle Ages
9 A Day in the Life of...
25 The Last Crusade
10 The End of Empires
FRANCE
JEAN-CLAUDE BOLOGNE
FRANZ-OLIVIER GIESBERT & CLAUDE QUÉTEL PATRICE GUENIFFEY & THIERRY LENTZ
11 A History of Brazil
MICHEL FAURE
12 A New History of Ideas
ALAIN BLONDY
13 The History of Jansenism
MONIQUE COTTRET
14 History at the Table
ANDRÉ CASTELOT
GEORGES MINOIS XAVIER HÉLARY
28 The Last Glimmers of the French Monarchy
CHARLES-ÉLOI VIAL
29 The Last French Century
RALPH SCHOR
BIOGRAPHIES 32 Robespierre
JEAN-CLÉMENT MARTIN
33 Martin Heidegger
GUILLAUME PAYEN
19th & 20th CENTURY 16 A History of Sabotage
SÉBASTIEN ALBERTELLI
17 Memories of an Embassy in Berlin
ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS-PONCET
18 That was the 20th century ALAIN DECAUX
19 Faces of Verdun
MICHEL BERNARD
34 Mussolini
MAX SCHIAVON
35 Trotsky against Stalin
ALAIN FREREJEAN
36 Josephine
PIERRE BRANDA
37 Diane de Poitiers
DIDIER LE FUR
38 Churchill
FRANÇOIS KERSAUDY
GENERAL HISTORY
Lady Scarface Diane Ducret
« These dames can kill with more than just their looks » Discover the women of the Mafia underworld: wives, mistresses and gangsters in their own right! General
April 2016
History
464 pages
proofs available in march
2016
A former student of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and of the Sorbonne, historian and journalist, DIANE DUCRET
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hey are called Ada and Mina Everleigh, “The Empresses of Vice”; Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie & Clyde fame; Mary Margaret Collins, “the ‘Kiss of Death’ girl”; Louise Rolfe “the Blonde alibi”; Thelma Todd, and Virginia Hill: they are the companions of fortune and misfortune, of whisky, drugs and Al Capone’s interminable parties. Pursued by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and Elliott Ness, they are the muses of the Prohibition. Runaways, rebels, free spirits, they have chosen to be “Lady Scarface”, in life and in death.
is the author the bestselling titles Femmes de Dictateur I & II (Perrin, 2011, 2012) and Corpus Equi (Perrin, 2013). She has presented the Forum de l’histoire on the History channel and produced documentaries for the programme « Des Racines et des Ailes » on French television. Her most recent titles are La Chair Interdite and L’homme idéal existe. Il est québécois (Albin Michel, 2014 and 2015) FEMMES DE DICTATEUR over 600 000 copies sold worldwide with foreign rights
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sold in 23 countries
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EXCERPT « 28 February 1938. The photographers crowd in, jostling each other against the opaque windows of the sedan that stops right in front of the pier. A blonde woman with wavy hair pulls up the collar of her fur coat, tugs on her leather gloves and tries to hide her face. But it’s impossible to hide when you’re the wife of the most notorious gangster in the country, Public Enemy No. 1. Pushing her stiletto-clad foot out of the car, she slips by the cameras’ flashes and the journalists’ calls. No comment, she doesn’t talk. You never talk when you’re the wife of a Mafioso... Mae Capone, the most mysterious and secretive of the Mob women, is the heir of a saga that commenced 3 decades earlier, when women, at the start of the 20th century, began a revolution by taking part in shady activities, and decided to take power in the illicit milieu, with or against the men. »
A History of Walking Antoine de Baecque
Walking has a history: Antoine de Baecque, a talented storyteller, presents an original, informed and lively account. General
March 2016
History
368 pages
A historian of ideas who teaches film history at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, a specialist on the culture of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, ANTOINE DE BAECQUE wrote the volume on the Enlightenment in the The Cultural History of France (Seuil, 2005) and contributed to the collective reference works, A History of the body, A History of virility and A History of emotions
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he author sets out to describe all possible forms of walking and the people who practice them: nomadic people, from the Lapp to the Sioux, itinerant merchants to shepherds, medieval apprentices to soldiers. Then there are pilgrims of all persuasions, those who return to the source of the Ganges and those who go to Compostela, who take the Tokaido road or walk to Mecca. If walking has now lost most of its professional practitioners, it has gained enthusiastic amateurs, leisure-time strollers and weekend hikers. And now we walk in the city, beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries when urban promenades became a popular custom. Finally, walking has long represented a means of taking political action, as illustrated by Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
(Seuil, 2006, 2011, 2015). At the same time, as a critic and film historian, he was editor-in-chief of the Cahiers du Cinéma and later the culture section of Libération. He recently published Crossing the Alps. Essay of walked history (Gallimard, 2014), which won the Prix Ptolémée du Festival international de géographie and the Prix Augustin Thierry des Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois and has sold more than 7,000
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copies.
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A History of the Couple Jean-Claude Bologne
Jean-Claude Bologne retraces the evolution of the couple from antiquity to the present. Concise and clear-sighted, this major synthesis expands the field of reflection on this timely subject. General
March 2016
History
320 pages
A philologist who studied at the University of Liège, Belgium, historian and prominent novelist, JEAN-CLAUDE BOLOGNE has published some thirty books
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raditionally, marriage is the focus for studying the couple, and all other possibilities outside of marriage are regarded as marginal – living together, free love, extramarital relationships, but also sibling bonds, medieval apprenticeship or exclusive friendship. Yet marriage is only one form of coupling among others.
since 1986 on the history of social customs, including: A History of Modesty (Perrin, 1986); A History of Celibacy and the Unmarried, ‘(Hachette Littérature, 2004); A History of Amorous Conquest (Seuil, 2007); Female Modesty (Seuil, 2010) and A History of Male Vanity (Perrin, 2011). He is president of the Société des Gens de Lettres, (The French
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Society of Authors).
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Originally a multiplicity, these unions have gradually crystallized around the notion of love derived from a Christian concept of the exclusive couple. But what really is a couple? How is it formed and on what is it based?
A Day in the Life of... Edited by Franz-Olivier Giesbert
& Claude Quétel
The « ordinary » life of extraordinary characters. General
May 2016
History
380 pages
Former director of Le Point, the host of numerous television shows, FRANZ-OLIVIER GIESBERT is one of the most famous journalists in France. His work as a biographer and novelist combines the highest levels of talent and success. A historian and the former director of the Caen Memorial, CLAUDE QUÉTEL has published numerous books on the Second World War, including Femmes dans la
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lthough we are familiar with the high points of the lives of great men, we know little or nothing about their « ordinary » daily lives. What were their habits? What did they eat? What time did they get up or go to bed? Did they have any hobbies or passions? Did they love luxury and being on show, or did they seek seclusion and try to protect their privacy? These questions (and many others) are answered in this groundbreaking book, edited by Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Claude Quétel. Under their direction, the best writers from the magazine Le Point and Perrin have pooled their skills and style to narrate a typical day in the lives of twenty great historical characters – the daily routine of some of the most famous people in history.
guerre, 1939-1945 (Women in War) 1.
Charlemagne’s day, by Laurent Theis.
donnable Défaite (The Unforgi-
2.
Francis I at Fontainebleau, by Didier Le Fur.
3.
Henri IV in Paris, by Jean-François Solnon
4.
The Sun King at Versailles, by JeanChristian Petitfils.
5.
Madame de Pompadour’s triumph and setbacks, by Cécile Berly.
6.
Marie Antoinette’s ordeal, by FranzOlivier Giesbert.
7.
The two bodies of the « Incorruptible »(Robespierre), by Marie-Hélène Baylac
vable Defeat) (Lattès, 2010) et La Seconde Guerre mondiale (The Second World War) (Perrin, 2015).
8.
The days and nights of the First Consul, by Thierry Lentz.
9.
Nicolas II at the Alexander Palace (near St. Petersburg), by Dominique Liechtenhan.
10. The tiger in his den; Clemenceau on the Rue Franklin, by Arnaud Teyssier.
11. The extravagant Mr Churchill, by François Kersaudy. 12. Stalin in the Kremlin, the master of time, by François-Xavier Nérard. 13. A day with Hitler at the Berghof, by Claude Quétel. 14. Philippe (Petain), Bernard (Menetrel), Pierre (Laval) and others, by François-Guillaume Lorrain. 15. The tiger at the water’s edge (Mao), by Rémi Kauffer. 16. The barracks life of Charles de Gaulle at the Elysée, François Malye. 17. JFK in the White House, by Antoine de Tarle. 18. The Khrushchev dacha, by Andrei Kosovoï 19. An ordinary Sunday (François Mitterand), Saïd Mahrane. 20. A day in the life of Elizabeth II, by Jean des Cars.
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(Larousse, 2004; 2006), L’Impar-
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The End of Empires edited by Patrice Gueniffey & Thierry Lentz
Is history doomed to repeat itself? This familiar question is well worth asking when we consider the rise and fall of empires. General
January 2016
History
450 pages
Director of the Fondation Napoléon, THIERRY LENTZ has established himself as today’s leading expert on the imperial era, evidenced by his New History of the First Empire in four volumes (Fayard, 2002-2010). Perrin recently published his The Congress of Vienna. A refounding of Europe 1814-1815 (2013); The 20 days of Fontainebleau. Napoleon’s first
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ince ancient times, certain lands, propelled by their military might, gold and conquering spirit, are hoisted to the rank of preponderant power and dominate a large part of the world. Yet, as the saying goes, all great empires perish. Causes vary, though a basic scenario applies to most cases: development crises; economic bankruptcy; exhaustion of the military model; and of course the appearance and increasing capacities of rivals. For the first time, renowned historians, specialists in their respective fields, brilliantly recount and analyze the decline and fall of the great empires that created the world as we know it, from Rome to Washington.
abdication 31 March-20 April 1814 (2014) and Waterloo (2015). Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, PATRICE GUENIFFEY has published notably The number and the reason (EHESS, 1993), Politics of the Terror, Essay on revolutionary violence
1.
Presentation by Patrice Gueniffey and Thierry Lentz
12. The end of the Great Empire, by Thierry Lentz.
2.
Alexander the Great’s ephemeral empire, by Claude Mossé.
13. The Chinese emperor’s nine lives, by Danielle Elisseeff.
3.
Rome, by Jean-Louis Voisin.
4.
The two falls of Persia, by Arnaud Blin
14. The disintegration of Austria-Hungary, by Jean-Paul Bled.
5.
The decay of the Carolingian empire, by Georges Minois.
15. The death of the « Sick Man », or the end of the Ottoman Empire, by Hamid Bozarslan.
6.
The end of the Caliphate, by Jacques Paviot.
16. The hell of the Third Reich, by David Gallo.
7.
The empire of the steppes, by Arnaud Blin.
17. The destruction of the Empire of the Rising Sun, by Jean-Louis Margolin.
8.
The 55 days of Byzantium, by Sylvain Gouguenheim.
18. The British Empire since 1945, by François Mougel.
9.
The implosion of the Aztecs, by Jean Meyer.
19. The end of the French Colonial dream (1945-1962), by Arnaud Teyssier.
(Gallimard, 2000). 18 Brumaire: epilogue of the French revolution (Perrin, 2008) and Bonaparte
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(Gallimard, 2013). All received
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unanimous critical acclaim. He has since edited the successful collective work by top historians Last days of the kings, published by Perrin and Le Figaro (2014).
10. The long agony of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, by Michel Kerautret. 11. Decline and fall of the Spanish dream, by Bartolomé Bennassar.
20. From the USSR to Russia, by Lorraine de Meaux. 21. The end of the American empire? by Pierre Melandri.
A History of Brazil Michel Faure
The tumultuous history of a country that constitutes a world in itself, full of contradictions, capturing our imagination. From the 16th century to the present – written in a brisk and vivid style. General
February 2016
History
480 pages
Journalist and correspondent for the magazine L’Express from 1989 to 2005, MICHEL FAURE has spent many years covering the news from Latin America. He has published several books, including, with Perrin, The Spain of Juan Carlos (2008).
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his history of Brazil explores the creation and destiny of a huge country, discovered by the West in the early days of the th 16 century. For a brief period Brazil was considered an earthly paradise. This country, against all odds, became a nation — a remarkable feat considering it was inhabited by several million indigenous people from different tribes speaking numerous languages. This paradise became the evil empire in the European imagination when it was discovered that the “noble savage” liked to eat his enemies. This vast land was colonized by a small and sparsely populated kingdom, Portugal. Its economy, until the late 19th century, was based on two problematic principles: the export of a single crop — sugar and later coffee — and the labor of millions of African slaves.
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First the country was a weak and neglected colony, then a kingdom in peril and an improvised empire. The republic filled the power vacuum in 1889. It turned out to be authoritarian and so little in tune with the people that they opened their arms to the Fascistleaning populist Vargas dictatorship. A fleeting democracy came in its wake. It began in euphoria and ended in paranoia, before it was caught up in another long dictatorship, military this time, product of the Cold War. The return of democracy, in 1985, was laborious; the economy surfed on phenomenal hyperinflation. Stabilizing the currency would be the masterwork of Professor Cardoso. Making life less unjust was Lula’s. Not managing the transition to modernity will be Dilma’s great failure.
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A New History of Ideas from the sacred to the political
Alain Blondy
The history of thought for everyone. A future classic. General
January 2016
History
350 pages
A university professor, ALAIN BLONDY has been teaching for more than thirty years at CELSA, the University of Paris-Sorbonne
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o tell the story of ideas in a fluid, direct style, accessible to all, is the goal of this book, written by an exceptional teacher whose courses have been followed passionately for over thirty years by thousands of students.
communications and journalism school. A visiting professor in Tunis, Cyprus and Moscow, he has also taught at the University of Malta. He is considered a leading specialist on the Mediterranean world, about which he has written
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several books.
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Never ponderous in his writing, Alain Blondy provides a grand synthesis that summarizes the ideas and seminal books of humanity’s great thinkers, from Plato to the new philosophers. He gives the appropriate amount of attention to all the main currents and schools of thought, both religious and secular. The author’s sense of synthesis makes the subject accessible, and his way with words makes it lively and exciting - essential qualities for a history of ideas usually imprisoned in heavy tomes.
The History of Jansenism Monique Cottret
A lucid synthesis of a complex subject, the book traces the history of a spiritual and political movement marked by a stubborn resistance to the violence of power. Its resonance is still relevant today. General
April 2016
History
416 pages
MONIQUE COTTRET has been teaching modern history at the University of Paris X-Nanterre since 1999. A student and collaborator of Robert Mandrou and Jean
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ansenism : the word appeared for the first time in France in 1650, as an insult. The quarrels about divine grace soon spread beyond the realm of Catholic theologians. What started as a Belgian spat between Ypres and Louvain blew up into an affair of state that agitated the last two centuries of the Ancien Régime.
Delumeau, she devoted her doctoral thesis to Jansenism, resulting in her masterwork Jansenisms and enlightenment: For another 18th century (A. Michel, 1998). She has also published Culture and Politics in France of the Enlightenment (A. Colin, 2002), Kill the tyrant? Tyran-
At its origins we find a man, Saint-Cyran, a family, the Arnaulds, and a monastery, Port Royal. From there, the movement expanded down through the years and all over Europe, remaining a sensitive subject until the early 19th century. Born in the era of the baroque, a beacon of the classical France of Pascal and Racine, it played a key role in the Enlightenment and exerted considerable influence during the Revolution.
nicide in modern Europe (Fayard, 2009) and, with Bernard Cottret, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his time (Perrin, 2005).
In particular, as Monique Cottret shows in this exceptional book that tackles Jansenism as a whole, this singular movement was shaped by the attitudes and reactions of its opponents and persecutors: Rome and the Jesuits, the Gallican church, the French state, the King who in 1710 did not hesitate to raze the monastery and – an unheard-of outrage – dig up the bodies of the faithful. The book is thus a political as much as a religious history.
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History at the Table If cuisine was told
André Castelot One of the author’s greatest successes newly available: known as the « Emperor of the Little Story » his style marries itself perfectly with this subject. FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1972 General
November 2015
History
703 pages
ANDRÉ CASTELOT was an historian. He wrote more than 70 successful books such as the
A
feast in words, to use Jean-François Revel’s famous title, this text has been unavailable for more than thirty years but hasn’t aged a bit.
biographies of Napoleon, MarieAntoinette, Napoleon the Third or François 1 , but also The History er
Almanac (L’almanach de l’Histoire) and the History Calendar (Le calendrier de l’Histoire). He founded and directed the collection
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« Présence d’Histoire » at Perrin.
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From A (apricot, absinth, asparagus, avocado, armagnac) to Z (Zewelewai, Zola), André Castelot invites us on a journey of joyful erudition through this dictionary of culinary wonders. One by one, he tells the story of eating utensils (the fork, the tablecloth, the napkin, the table, dishes…), the aliments and ingredients (coffee, water, strawberries, beans, oysters, potatoes, salads..), the chefs and famous gourmets (Brillat-Savarin, Escoffier, Talleyrand, Vatel), the Kings and Queens at the table (their meals, their tastes), the establishments and culinary professions (cabarets, cafés, cooks, grocers, great and famous tables), the origin and the evolution of meals, their origin and their evolution (sauerkraut, scallops, omelets), the wines and drinks, the cheeses, national cuisines, and finally, the idioms and customs that are part of the well-known French cultural exception: gastronomy.
19 & 20 CENTURIES th
th
A History of Sabotage Sébastien Albertelli
At a time when the issue has again become relevant, the first history of sabotage and saboteurs during World War II. General
May 2016
History
400 pages
SÉBASTIEN ALBERTELLI is a professor of history (his PhD dissertation was supervised by JeanPierre Azéma, one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War). In 2008, his thesis was awarded the Philippe ViannayDéfense de la France award from the Fondation de la Résistance.
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abotage has become one of the weapons of modern combat, but it is more commonly associated with the Resistance during World War II. The phenomenon, however, was not born with the « army of shadows ». It emerged in the last decades of the 19th century, at the meeting point between labor unions and the military. The saboteur progressively embodied a new form of threat, whether its origins were anarchist, communist or German. The fear that the saboteur inspired, however, was disproportionate to the real danger he represented.
He contributed to the Dictionnaire de la Résistance (Dictionary of the Resistance) and the Dictionnaire de Gaulle (De Gaulle dictionary) (Bouquins collection, 2006) and published Les services secrets du général de Gaulle (The secret services of General de Gaulle) with
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Perrin in 2009 (4,000 copies sold).
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Including during the Second World War, which marked a major milestone in the history of sabotage. The practice became widespread, each of the major players gradually giving it a place in their strategy: the Resistance, the Gaullist and the British secret services, the Allied authorities and the German services. Everyone believed, to varying degrees, in its effectiveness, the evaluation of which this author calls into question. In any case, it was the Resistance that marked the transition from the era of experimentation to that of full development, as evidenced by Sébastien Albertelli in his presentation, based on largely unpublished archival documentation.
Memories of an Embassy in Berlin 1931-1938
André François-Poncet An exceptional account of Hitler and the Third Reich, told from the inside by the Ambassador of France in Berlin. Originally published in 1946, this testimonial has been out of print for half a century*.
General
January 2016
History
512 pages
After Berlin, ANDRÉ FRANÇOISPONCET held the post of ambassador to Rome from 1938 to 1940. Interned by the Gestapo for two years in the Tyrol, he would return as the first Ambassador of France to Germany in 1955. Author of a considerable body of work, he was elected to the French Academy in 1952. JEAN-PAUL BLED is unanimously considered one of the leading French experts on Germany and Austria-Hungary. His latest book, Les Hommes d’Hitler (Hitler’s men) (Perrin, 2015), is a popular success and has received considerable
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or more than seven years, from September 1931 to October 1938, André-François Poncet was in charge of the French Embassy in the crucial period that determined Germany’s fate and its separation from the rest of the world. Combining portraits of great acuity, often fierce and ironic, with accounts and masterful analyses of key events, the book offers a sweeping narrative that is required reading for anyone interested in the history of those dark years. Having arrived when the Weimar Republic was beginning to disintegrate, the ambassador gives a vivid account of how it ended. He had a ringside seat when Hitler came on the scene and he describes the first year of his “reign” in which he implacably established his dictatorship. The Fuehrer then started the march towards war, violating the Treaty of Versailles before attacking Austria and Czechoslovakia (the narrative of the Munich conference is electrifying). The book ends with the story of the author’s last meeting with Hitler in his “eagle’s nest”, a prelude to a sharp, lucid and authoritative portrait of the German leader.
acclaim from critics.
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*German, Italian and English translations of the text were published in the 1940’s but the rights have now reverted to Perrin.
An exceptional chronicler, François-Poncet perfectly decrypts the foundations and ideology of the regime as well as the psychology of its leaders, masking its brutality for the democratic West, the better to divide it while playing masterfully on its fear of a new conflict.
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That was the 20th century Alain Decaux From 1905 to 1940, from the Roaring Twenties to the edge of the abyss; and from 1940 to 1963, from global war to the death of President Kennedy: this is the 20th century as Alain Decaux has witnessed, experienced and understood it. With the curiosity and perspective of a writer and historian who zooms in on the aspects that most amazed, disturbed or shocked him. General
June 2016
History
2 volumes
Famous for his ability to make historical figures and events come alive in his books, television shows and plays, ALAIN DECAUX is a member of the French Academy and has held various governmen-
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tal responsibilities.
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fter covering the period from 1905 to 1932, Alain Decaux presents some of the main events that took place from 1934 to 1940, a time when the generation that had vowed “Never again!” at the armistice in 1918, rushed headlong towards the Second World War that would engulf it. In the second volume, Alain Decaux focuses primarily on the period from 1940 to 1945, which he describes as absolute. The author then discusses post-war history globally from 1945 to the death of Kennedy in 1963: the Jewish exodus, the death of Stalin, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuba crisis, etc.
EXERPT « I was born when the 20th century, still immature, went into its Roaring Twenties. I have never ceased to be fascinated by all this excess. Why have I been so riveted by certain celebrities as well as certain nobodies? Why have some human interest stories caught my attention just as much as major political events? This book will try to answer those questions. What I am humbly offering to the reader should not be considered a history of this century. Too many episodes would be missing. It is nothing else, and nothing more, than the 20th century as I have seen, experienced and felt it. »
Faces of Verdun Michel Bernard To mark the centenary of the Battle of Verdun (February-December 1916), Michel Bernard recounts this unique moment in the history of the First World War in words and images, showing us the faces of the soldiers Illustrated
February 2016
Hardback
200 pages
MICHEL BERNARD, historian and government official , is an exceptionally gifted writer and one of the top experts on the Great War as seen by its writer-combatants, notably Maurice Genevoix. He
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ichel Bernard gets as close as possible to the reality of the men fighting at Verdun by focusing on their faces. Obviously they express pain, suffering, exhaustion and madness, but these faces also testify to solidarity, the moments of joy, and the emotional and physical diversity of the men of Verdun. They tell of the war, their lived experience.
is the author of La Tranchée de Calonne (The Calonne Trench) (La Table Ronde, 2007), Le Corps de la France (The body of France) (La Table Ronde 2010), and La Grande Guerre vue du ciel, (The Great War seen from above) (Perrin, 2013), a significant public and critical success.
This book is constructed around a text that is more literary than historical, which Bernard’s pen has made uniquely poetic, and a hundred unpublished images from the Archives of the Photograph Section of the French Army. While everything is true in the text, it is not the dry account of events or strategic and tactical questions that interest the author. It is the emotions of soldiers reflected in their expressions frozen on film. This original perspective – text and image – gives us a better understanding of the humanity and individuality of the participants in this legendary battle of the Great War.
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ANCIENT & MEDIEVAL HISTORY
Palmyra
Truth and Fiction
Annie & Maurice Sartre Tied to recent tragic events in the news, much false information is circulating about Palmyra. Truth, grounded in field work, is restored and elucidated by these experts, in a dynamic and instructive approach. General
May 2016
History
280 pages
ANNIE SARTRE, emeritus professor of ancient history at the University of Artois, and MAURICE SARTRE, professor emeritus of ancient history at the University of Tours, are the joint authors of Palmyre. La cité des caravanes (Palmyra. The city of caravans) (Gallimard, 2008) and Zénobie, de Palmyre à Rome (Zenobia, from
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or the last year, the cruelty and destructive madness of the Islamic State have put Palmyra in the headlines, when before it was simply a tourist destination or a site for archaeological research. In the murderous grasp of ISIS, the pearl of the desert has become the open wound of all humanity. It is more than ever vital to know exactly what Palmyra represents, what it was, what it has endured and is still enduring. But the television and press coverage of these events has included testimonials and pronouncements that were hasty, imprecise and even downright false. Even recent books have contributed to the regrettable confusion.
Palmyra to Rome) (Perrin, 2014). Annie and Maurice Sartre have lived in Syria, in the 1970’s and
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between 2009 and 2011.
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The two top specialists on ancient Syria therefore decided to correct the multiple and often serious mistakes they had been coming across for months. Listing the errors, they respond by restoring the scientific truth in sixty entries grouped into ten chapters. The reader can find the answer to any question that arises, but also read the book continuously, as a complete history of Palmyra from its origins until today.
Carthage Khaled Melliti Khaled Melliti narrates the unique destiny of Africa’s largest ancient city, showing that Carthage is the missing link between the world of the Greek city states and that of the Roman Empire. An analytic overview of the history of Rome’s only rival, the ancient city of Carthage. General
April 2016
History
464 pages
French-Tunisian historian KHALED MELITTI is the leading Frenchlanguage specialist on Carthage and the Punic Wars. Author of a well-received thesis on “The place of Hellenism in the political evolution of Carthage”, he now divides his time, and his teaching, between Tunisia and France.
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arthage faced great challenges in the Hellenistic period (4th and 3rd centuries BC) : the threats represented by Greece and Macedonia forced the Punic city to prepare accordingly. It was clear to the leaders of the metropolis that in order to continue playing a leading role in the Mediterranean, their capacity to take action had to be comparable to that of the rising powers. And thus, from the end of the 4th century BC, the African city accelerated its policy of drastic structural reforms. In the following century, the ever-growing danger represented by Rome spurred Carthage to overhaul its political institutions and at the same time to seek a political and military alliance with the Greeks. And it fell to the Barcids, Hamilcar and later Hannibal, to try and reach this twofold objective: they attempted to turn the Greeks’ logistical assistance into a genuine political and military alliance against Rome. From this momentous encounter between two worlds – Punic and Latin – emerged a new perspective that Carthage did not have the opportunity to carry through. But Rome would implement it with the glorious outcome we know, even before the final destruction of its implacable enemy.
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A History of the Middle Ages Georges Minois
A major synthesis of ten centuries of history by a leading medievalist. Ancient &
April 2016
Medieval
528 pages
History GEORGES MINOIS has published a number of successful books with Perrin, including Charlemagne (2010), Philippe le Bel (Philippe the Fair) (2014), Charles le Téméraire (Charles the Bold) (2015), and His-
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hy this new history of the Middle Ages? First, because the more this period recedes into the past, the more we sense vaguely that it is here we can find the roots of our contemporary aspirations and issues – religious obscurantism as well as elevated spirituality, blind violence and the search for meaning , fear of the future and the dream of a return to nature.
toire de la célébrité, (A History of Celebrity) (2012).
Second, because the image we have today of the medieval world is too often distorted. Transformed into dark or shining legend, the era of the Middle Ages has lost all coherence in the collective memory of the “general public”. To understand it – and thus ourselves – we must restore the facts, names, dates, in their logical and chronological sequence. This book attempts to do just that.
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Third, because today more than ever, we need to expand our perspective by inserting “our” European Middle Ages into the context of its relations with its neighbors. Western medieval history is inseparable from that of the Middle East, both as the enemy and the promised land. In exploring the Middle Ages, we go beyond our technological advances and come back to the fundamental questions posed by mankind in those times.
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The Last Crusade Xavier Hélary
For the first time, and within a particular geopolitical context, the last Crusade is narrated and explained. Ancient &
May 2016
Medieval
200 pages
History A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and professor of history, XAVIER HÉLARY teaches medieval history at the University of Lyon III. He is the author of Kortrijk (Tallandier,2012), The Army of the King of France (Perrin,2012) and, with Philippe Contamine, the Dictionary of Joan of Arc (Robert Laffont, Bouquins series, 2012).
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ugust 25, 1270 : Saint Louis dies in the camp of his Crusader army, near the ancient city of Carthage. Departing from the French town of Aigues-Mortes at the beginning of July, the lords and knights who took up the cross to follow King Louis of France landed in Tunis a few days later. Stuck waiting for the King of Sicily who kept postponing his arrival, exhausted by the heat of the Tunisian summer, the Crusaders were rapidly decimated by disease. After a few battles to keep up appearances, the Crusader army sailed in November. The storm that destroyed the fleet in a Sicilian port dashed any further hope of continuing the expedition to the Holy Land. The Crusaders had no choice but to return to France. Undertaken at great cost, preceded by many preparations of all kinds, the eighth and last Crusade was a complete failure. The book tells the story of this fiasco, starting from the moment Saint Louis takes up the cross in 1267 and ending with the return of the Crusader army in the spring of 1271 – a disaster that provides food for thought in these times of tension and confrontation.
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MEDIEVAL MEDIEVAL HISTORY FRANCE HISTORY
The Last Glimmers of the French Monarchy The court of France during the Age of Revolutions (1792-1870)
Charles-Éloi Vial A study, much of it based on unpublished archives, encompassing the entire history of the French court between 1789 and 1870. The first-ever depiction of the system of representation of power and promotion of French elites in the 19th century, essential contemporary French politics. France
Feburary 2016 600 pages
Archivist and paleographer with a doctorate in history from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, CHARLES-ELOI VIAL is a curator at the National Library of France, where he is responsible for modern
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and contemporary manuscripts.
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t has long been generally believed that the whole royal court structure collapsed like a house of cards at the beginning of the Revolution, reappearing only occasionally during the 19th century. And there was also Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, who could only be hostile to any form of royal pomp... Now we can call into question these presuppositions. Unpublished documents make it possible to see the court phenomenon from Louis XVI to Napoleon III as a succession of redefinitions and reassessments: originally a closed microcosm consisting of the king’s table companions under the Old Regime, the court after 1789 was used in turn as a political instrument, a diplomatic weapon, a tool for the promotion of new elites. A subject of this magnitude calls for setting aside the usual trivia about Marie Antoinette’s dresses, or the frivolity of Second Empire balls, to conduct an in-depth study of logistics, administration, the everyday lives of palace residents. The court was a place of extraordinary social cohabitation, with domestics and noblemen housed in the same buildings. In a France plagued by political instability, the idea of continuity was also omnipresent. Many participants reappeared from one regime to the next to ensure that knowledge of court etiquette was transmitted. Finally, despite the revolutionary explosions that systematically expelled monarchs from the throne (1792, 1814, 1815, 1830, 1848, 1870), these last courts were not complete failures: their artistic legacy and heritage are absolutely key, and even though the Republican imagination was formed in opposition to the memory of monarchies, sound knowledge of the last court systems is essential to understanding today’s French political functioning.
The Last French Century
(1914 - 2015)
Ralph Schor France today and yesterday: destiny or decline? An unusually complete synthesis that will eliminate a number of clichés and misconceptions.
France
February 2016 380 pages
RALPH SCHOR is a French historian, a specialist on the contemporary era. Among his books are Crises et dictatures dans l’Europe de l’entre-deux-guerres (Crisis and dictatorships in interwar Europe) (Nathan, 2013), La France dans la première guerre mondiale (France
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or a number of current essayists – known as the “déclinistes” – 20th-century France has begun a probably irreversible decline, the only question being to pinpoint the date the process first started. Some say it was 1918, after the country had been bled dry by the Great War; others point to 1939, caused by the moral collapse that brought on the Second World War. And for others, finally, it was the collapse of the colonial empire that downgraded France to a second-rate power.
in the First World War) (Nathan, 2005) and Chronologie commentée de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (Annotated chronology of the Second World War), co-written with André Kaspi and Nicole Pietri (Perrin, 2010).
The author’s approach is both chronological and cross-cutting, characterized by an explicit refusal to fuel controversy. He analyzes the country’s situation and its relationship to the world from 1914 to 2015. For each period considered – the Belle Epoque, seen as an introduction to the previous century, the interwar period, the Fourth and Fifth Republic he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of France in various domains: political, economic, social, societal and intellectual. In each, he weighs France in the balance. He does not neglect to address its international reputation and influence. In the process, he provides food for thought, implicitly showing that any position must be rooted in profound knowledge of history, the only way to avoid polemic and purely ideological positions. As for now, the beginning of the 21st century, when France’s national identity is being degraded and abused, the country still has the means to find solutions, as it always has.
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MEDIEVAL BIOGRAPHIES HISTORY
Robespierre Jean-Clément Martin A new portrait of the revolutionary figure nicknamed the « Incorruptible » – it tells the story of how a monster was created. For the author, the man Robespierre is neither an enigma nor the leader of a sect, but simply one of those young men who become actors in historical events that transcend them and leave them frozen into caricatures for eternity. Biography
January 2016 400 pages
JEAN-CLÉMENT MARTIN, professor emeritus at the University of Paris 1, former director of the Institute of History of the French Revolution, has published Nouvelle Histoire de la Révolution française (New History of the French Revolution) (Perrin, 2012) Rights sold to CRITICA, Spain, La Guerre de Vendée (The Vendée war) (Seuil, 1987 and Points, 2014)and La Machine à fantasmes (The fantasy machine)
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(Editions Vendémiaire, 2014).
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wo centuries after his death, Robespierre is still a subject that arouses passion and controversy. The life of this obscure lawyer from Arras who became one of the most prominent and most feared revolutionaries in France is seen as enigmatic, even outrageous. This perspective has led Robespierre’s biographers of take on the role of judge or defense counsel to explain his life story, which all of them consider unique and incomparable. This book is the result of a different approach. By refusing to consider Robespierre’s short existence as an exceptional destiny, by situating the man among his contemporaries, the author shows how the brilliant student became involved in the nascent Revolution. A recognized orator but a marginalized politician, he had to wait until the summer of 1793 to share power with his colleagues and organize the victory of the Revolution. He was not the “head” of the Jacobins, as is often said. It was not until spring 1794 that he came to represent a particular current in the Committee that wanted to control political violence and establish the cult of the Supreme Being. His initiatives raised fears that he was fomenting a coup and he was outlawed, and then sent to the guillotine, after a political purge like the ones he had previously helped orchestrate. The essential difference was that in the aftermath of his death, public opinion made him responsible for the “Terror”. This book therefore tells the story of how a monster was made. This was the culmination of a personal adventure, one of many in this era marked by very strong personalities, Napoleon Bonaparte providing the example of a success story.
Martin Heidegger
Catholicism, revolution, Nazism
Guillaume Payen The book’s ambition is to present an historical biography of Martin Heidegger. The result of 12 years of research, based on a thorough reading of Heidegger’s works, including the controversial Black Notebooks, Guillaume Payen looks at Heidegger’s life from the point of view of an historian. A unique biographical contribution. Biography
January 2016 616 pages
A professor of history (University of Paris-Sorbonne) and research associate at the Roland Mousnier center (CNRS / Paris-Sorbonne), GUILLAUME PAYEN heads the
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any external testimonies, letters written by the philosopher to his wife, his friends, his mistresses, academic lectures, the various texts of commentary or philosophy still in print today, and the Black Notebooks provide the bibliographic database of this biography.
history division of the research center at the officers’ academy of the national Gendarmerie. His work on Martin Heidegger’s anti-Semitism was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.
Refusing to take sides, to praise or to vilify, this book attempts to paint an historical portrait of the man, a portrait that is sometimes appealing but often troubling. Heidegger was an attentive reader, a skilled orator who could persuade his interlocutors of the interest, admiration, friendship or love he bore them, but he could also be contemptuous, deceptive, self-centered. He devoted most of his life to lecturing and writing various philosophical texts and many, many letters, yet he did not disdain skiing, canoeing and hiking. While he had little time for his son, he cultivated his great love of women, to the despair of his wife. Ultimately, the author succeeds in deciphering the three fateful forces that one after the other dominated Heidegger’s life: Catholicism, from his youth until the end of the Great War; the revolution, his political and intellectual aspiration until 1933; and as of 1930, Nazism, which for him was the path to be followed for Germany to achieve the philosophical revolution he envisioned.
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Mussolini Max Schiavon
We already know all about the « political » Mussolini, but nothing had been written until now about the Duce at war. This is the first overview of the subject. General
May 2016
History
250 pages
A historian and an army officer, MAX SCHIAVON was the head of research at the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD), the French government’s military archives. Author of several books on military history, including Le Front d’Orient
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or many complex reasons, and despite his martial character and matador attitude, Mussolini is undoubtedly the politician at the helm during the Second World War who is the most scorned from a military point of view. Among the defeated, and without the benefit of a myth such as that surrounding the effectiveness of the Wehrmacht, Mussolini’s actions never seemed worthy of serious study. Wrong.
(The Eastern Front) (Tallandier,
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2014).
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Based on research in the Italian, French and American archives, Max Schiavon has set out to elucidate what was indeed crucial to the Italian dictator: his military ambition. In fact, the Duce had known war his entire life. Having fought and been wounded in the First World War, he would then develop his own strategic thinking (focused on the Mediterranean) that he began to implement once he was in power. This is what Max Schiavon skillfully recounts, revealing on one hand the dictator’s actions and his psychology, and on the other, how the warrior phenomenon was central to Fascism.
Trotsky against Stalin Alain Frèrejean The story of the relentless struggle between Trotsky and Stalin based on recent interviews with the best French historians of this period of Russian history. And an exceptional witness of the assassination attempt on Trotsky and his last moments: his own grandson, Esteban Volkov. General
May 2016
History
330 pages
ALAIN FREREJEAN is the author of several books, including C’était Georges Pompidou (It was Georges Pompidou) (Fayard, 2007), Tito-Truman, Le coup d’arrêt à Staline (Stalin’s standstill) (Editions de la Bisquine, 2014). With Perrin he
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he story of the relentless struggle between Trotsky and Stalin based on recent interviews with the best French historians of this period of Russian history: Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Alexandre Adler, Stephane Courtois, Jean-Jacques Marie, Alexandre Sumpf, Nicolas Werth and Serge Wolikow. And an exceptional witness of the assassination attempt on Trotsky and his last moments: his own grandson, Esteban Volkov.
published Churchill-Stalin, comparative biographies (2013).
Some see Trotsky as the champion of the workers of the world. Stalin, in contrast, was the new tsar, entrenched in the Kremlin with a new privileged class, the nomenklatura, a handful of bureaucrats hogging the state dachas and stores. Trotsky supposedly fought against fascism and Stalin’s pact with Hitler. And the villain Stalin had killed the good guy Trotsky. In reality, Trotsky was no saint. In the relationship between the two rivals, ideological struggle and personal ambition were coupled with contempt and jealousy, which eventually turned into implacable and obsessive hatred. Trotsky, his vision as sharp as steel but too sure of himself, underestimated his rival. We witness the irresistible rise of Stalin, the man with the mysterious smile and the yellow eyes of a cat.
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Josephine Pierre Branda Beyond the popular myths and caricatures of Napoleon’s Empress, the discovery of another Josephine, engaging and disconcerting. The author’s qualifications will make this biography the definitive reference.
Biography
January 2016 464 pages
Director of heritage at the Fondation Napoléon, PIERRE BRANDA is the author of numerous works on the Emperor, including Le Prix de la gloire. Napoléon et l’argent (The Price of Glory. Napoleon and money) (Fayard, 2007); Napoléon et ses hommes. La Maison de l’Empereur (Napoleon and his men.
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irst of all, her real name was not Josephine de Beauharnais, but Marie-Joseph-Rose Taschers La Pagerie. It was Napoleon who gave her the name Josephine, and then the title of Empress. Behind this first mystification lurk many others, exposed one after the other by Pierre Branda. Certainly the young Creole woman had the grace of a swan, which she used as an effective instrument (she was deemed “incomparable”) throughout her life, from her birth in Martinique in 1763 until her death in 1814 in her Malmaison chateau outside of Paris.
The House of the Emperor) (Fayard, 2011); and La Guerre secrète de Napoléon. Île d’Elbe 1814- 1815 (Napoleon’s secret war. Elba Island
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1814-1815) (Perrin 2014).
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But the author goes far beyond the usual portrayals of her amorous prowess and real or supposed infidelities, focusing instead on Josephine as the center of networks of influence and wealth. Based on a mountain of documentary evidence, he reveals the Bonaparte clan’s unfailing hostility towards her, her love of nature and the arts, and most of all her complex and unwavering relationship to Napoleon. She accompanied him in his dizzying ascent but did not share his ultimate fall. Far from dark legend or anecdotal gossip, Branda resurrects a woman who had as much intellectual power as physical charm, who confronted history and was both exalted and destroyed by it.
Diane de Poitiers Didier Le Fur
Beyond the myths, this is the first historical biography of THE royal mistress of the Renaissance, by the top authority on 16th century France. Biography
May 2016 210 pages
A renowned modernist, DIDIER LE FUR is a top expert on the 16 centh
tury and the Renaissance, having published Le Royaume de France en 1500 (France in 1500) (RMN, 2010) and Marignan 1515 (Perrin, 2004). A distinguished biographer,
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onventional history tells us that Diane de Poitiers (1500-1566) was the mistress of two kings of France, François I and his son Henry II, and paints a portrait of her using all the clichés about feminine wiles. Motivated by her greed for financial gain, according to the myth, she used her physical charms to exert a strong influence on Henry II, who loved her to distraction – to his great misfortune, of course.
he wrote François Ier (Perrin, 2015), a portrait of a king and a key period in French history that was the culmination of fifteen years of scholarship. It was a success with both readers and critics.
Didier Le Fur knows all about historiographical invention. He explains, simply and with style, what we actually do know about her, her behavior and her character. He then shows how her image was fabricated, by whom and for what purposes (mostly to disparage the Valois dynasty and its founder Francis I). The woman Le Fur reveals was certainly close to power, but never exercised it herself. She was able nonetheless to find a place for herself in a world dominated by men. The woman in this innovative, rich and colorful portrait is finally real, and she is fascinating.
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Churchill François Kersaudy
A look at Churchill the military man in the successful « Masters of War » series by the astute WWII expert, François Kersaudy. Biography
June 2016 280 pages
FRANÇOIS KERSAUDY has taught at the universities of Oxford and Paris I. A specialist of the Second World War and a renowned historian – recipient of 11 French and British literary prizes, he has concentrated his work on events on Nazi Germany and on the Eastern Front for the past several years. His excellent biographies published by Perrin include, among others, Hermann Goering (Perrin, 2009) and Hitler (Perrin, 2011) and a unique work on
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he military Churchill is too rarely examined. After seven generations of civilians in the Spencer-Churchill family, at an early age Winston chose to follow the warrior tradition of his illustrious ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. The courage, ambition and tactical cleverness of the young cavalry officer suggested a brilliant military career, but in the early 20th century he was diverted from this path by politics and journalism. Nonetheless, whether as a member of Parliament or as minister, Churchill remained fascinated by the military, and it led to his fame during the two world wars. In fact, although profoundly a warrior, Winston Churchill was, above all, a great statesman, and the statesman could become a catastrophic strategist if he was not adequately assisted and reined in.
the relations between Churchill
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and De Gaulle.
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Numerous illustrations and maps accompany the text.