France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle

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Carla believes that a new cultural world where women were free from corporate privilege, aristocratic salons, and patriarchal censorship, was achieved through The French Revolution. Of course, no article on the best books about France would be complete without a nod to A Tale of Two Cities; a story which takes place between London and Paris. The work is historical fiction and is set in the two capitals before and during the French Revolution. It follows the intertwining stories of Lucie and her father, Doctor Manette, who have never met as he was imprisonedfor eighteen years in the Bastille. It’s well worth a read if you ever get the chance and explores the conditions that led up to the French Revolution. Much of the book is located in Provence and The Horseman on the Roofhas since been transformed into a movie starring Juliette Binoche. The original book was published in the 1950s and follows the story of a young Italian nobleman who is residing in France and is trying to raise money for the Italian revolution against Austria in the mid-1800s. The Three Musketeers– by Alexandre Dumas While this is a novel, it highlights French concerns for social welfare at the same time he establishes heredity for the staunch national pride France is credited with today. such support, superior to all chronicles, history moves on, serious and strong, with authority. But independently of these specific instruments, acts and documents, immeasurable assistance arrives from everywhere. —Thousands of indirect revelations, whose outline illuminates the central narrative, come to it from literature and art, from commerce. —History becomes a reality guaranteed by the various verifications furnished by all the various forms of our activity.

I loved the title of this book so much that I had to add it to this list of great books about France. And when it comes to the content this non-fiction book contains? Well, for starters, Jean-Benoît and I have the same last name! Written by two Canadians, the book is a fun and incrediblybrief introduction to French culture, and will definitely leave you wanting more (or maybe to even visit the country for yourself!) How to be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits –by Caroline de Maigret, Anne Berest, Sophie Mas, Audrey Diwan As they sniff out death very well, those moments when the wounded soul might weaken, one of them, (...) by his persistent need for self-examination—and self-justification—Michelet’s Preface to his completed History continues the autobiographical “Letter to Edgar Quinet” that introduces The People (1846), as Michelet surveys his vast ambitions while asserting how they were fulfilled.

the lonely galleries of the Archives where I wandered for twenty years, in that deep silence, murmurs nevertheless would reach my ears. The distant sufferings of so many souls, stifled in those ancient times, would moan softly. Stern reality protested against art, and occasionally had bitter words for it: “What are you fooling around with? Are you another Walter Scott, recounting picturesque details at great length, the sumptuous meals of Philip the Good, the empty Oath of the Pheasant? Do you know that our martyrs have been expecting you for four hundred years? Do you know that the valiant men of Courtray, of Rosebecque, do not have the monument which history owed them? The salaried chroniclers, Froissart the chaplain, Monstrelet the chatterbox, do not suffice. It was with firm faith, with the hope of justice that they gave their lives. They would have the right to say, ‘History! Settle with us! Your creditors are summoning you! We accepted death for one line from you!’” my series of Prefaces, and my Explanatory Notes, can be seen, from volume to volume, the foundation underneath, the enormous underpinning of documents and manuscripts, of rare publications, etc., which sustains it. 6

has one supreme and very exacting condition. It is genuinely life only when complete. All its organs are interdependent and work only as a whole. Our vital functions are linked, presuppose one another. If one is missing, nothing will live any longer. In the past it was believed possible to isolate by the scalpel, to follow separately each of our systems; this cannot be, for everything influences everything. was free because of solitude, poverty and a simple life, and free through my teaching. Under the ministry of Martignac (a brief moment of generosity) it was decided to reconstitute the École Normale, and Monsieur Letronne, who was consulted, had the chair of philosophy and history given to me. My Précis of Modern History, my Vico, published in 1827, seemed to him sufficient qualifications. This dual teaching, which I carried on still later at the Collège de France, opened up a sphere of limitless freedom for me. My boundless domain included every fact, every idea. a master with whom I shared, not genius no doubt, but a violent will, upon entering the Louvre (the Louvre of that time, where all Europe’s art was collected), did not seem troubled. He said: “Fine! I’ll do it all over again.” In rapid sketches which he never signed, he went about seizing and appropriating everything. And, were it not for 1815, he would have kept his word. Such are the passions, the madness of youth.Following the death of her mother six years prior, Gully Wells takes a trip to La Migoua, a house in Provence that had belonged to her mother, the American journalist Dee Wells. The bookrecounts Wells’ time in France, as well as her childhood there and is an entertaining memoir full of surprises and easy to read. A Moveable Feast– Ernest Hemingway arduous labor of about forty years was conceived in an instant, in the lightning flash of the July Revolution. During those memorable days a great light appeared, and I perceived France. To the Royalists, a whole world of odd anecdotal facts; for example, the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask and the wisdom of their queen. Franklin′s letters (1863) revealed the secret, according to Richelieu, and have proven that I alone was right.

The big question in the book is whether the Enlightenment period meant the same for different genders, social classes and Europeans vs non-Europeans.

say that before the battle of Agincourt, each Englishman looked to his salvation, made confession; the French embraced, forgave each other, and forgot their hatreds. This has nothing to do with the honesty of the individuals. There were some admirable men, people (...)

Carla Hesse tells this story by writing an extensive history of how French women have used literature to create themselves as modern individuals. Not material enough, taking races into account, but not the soil, the climate, foods, and so many physical and physiological conditions. just my first two volumes, I caught a glimpse of the immense perspectives of this terra incognita. I said: “It will take ten years... ” No, twenty; no, thirty... And the road ahead of me grew longer and longer. I did not complain. On exploratory voyages one’s heart enlarges, grows, no longer sees anything but the goal. One forgets oneself entirely. So it happened with me. My fervent pursuit constantly pushing me forward, I lost sight of myself, I withdrew from myself. I let the world pass me by, and I took history for life.exerts upon itself an action of self-gestation, which, from preexisting materials, creates absolutely new things. From the bread, the fruits that I have eaten, I make red and salty blood which does not at all resemble the foods from which it is derived. So goes the historical life process, and so too goes each people fabricating itself, generating itself, grinding and amalgamating elements, which probably remain there as obscure and muddled ingredients, but which are relatively insignificant compared to the long, slow travail of the great soul. Murder, intrigue and mystery, this gripping novel is known in English as ‘The Beast Within’ or ‘The Beast in Man’. Written by Zola in 1890, the storyline follows the story of a killer and is an intense look on human nature, and what it means to be human. Many claim that this is one of Zola’s all-time best works. The Count of Monte Cristo– By Alexandre Dumas I do not want to anticipate here. In only one or two words I can say: It is this book, “this book of a poet and a man of imagination,“ that, thanks to its telling documentation, has told everyone whatever was important to them: noble historical constellation which, from 1820 to 1830, caused so great a stir—MM. de Barante, Guizot, Mignet, Thiers, AugustinThierry—considered history from specialized and differing points of view. One was preoccupied with the racial element, another with institutions, etc., perhaps not understanding adequately how difficult it is to isolate these things, how each of them works upon the others. Do races, for example, remain the same without being influenced by changing customs? Can institutions be sufficiently studied without taking into account the history of ideas and the multitude of social conditions from which they arise? There is always something artificial about these specializations, which claim to illuminate, but which nonetheless might give faulty profiles, deceiving us about the whole, concealing the greater harmony. His books included The Normans in the South, A History of Venice, The Italian World, Venice: A Traveller's Companion, 50 Years of Glyndebourne: An Illustrated History, A Short History of Byzantium, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, and A History of France. He and H. C. Robbins Landon wrote Five Centuries of Music in Venice.