If there is any kind of conclusion here it is that, as Fenby puts it, France is a prisoner, trapped under the weight of its history.

Policing Paris examines a critical moment in the history of immigration control and political surveillance. In The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914, Lenard Berlanstein examines how technological advances, expanding industrialization, bureaucratization, and urban growth affected the lives of the working poor and near poor of one of the world's most influential cities during an era of intense social and . A History of France is a concise, fast-paced yet insightful overview of the history of France by John Julius Norwich.

In 1993, he was appointed CVO for having curated an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne. This provocative book, in conjunction with its acclaimed predecessor, French Fascism: The First Wave, demolishes the notion that fascism never took hold in France. John Julius Norwich (1929 – 2018) wrote many books, including Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe; A History of Venice; Byzantium; and the New York Times bestseller Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy. Very good on the need to look for specific political causes rather than any supposedly inevitable pattern of socio-economic conflict. In the raucous decade following World War I, newly blurred boundaries between male and female created fears among the French that theirs was becoming a civilization without sexes.

Both the Church and secularists championed the "miracle" town as crucial in shaping how society should think about the mind, body, and spirit. This is an excellent way to teach the facts, especially if you are about to visit France for the first time, without being preached at. After reading the preface, one almost wishes Norwich had written his own memoir and left the history book to French scholars. You can go back and read in greater detail about things which interest you, but this is a fun, enjoyable and great introduction to the history of this great nation and readers will miss the intimate writing style of Norwich, who was passionate in his writing and keen to share his enthusiasm with the reader. It brings together the results of the first part of the first major study from Harvard University's Centre for European .Another details the prodigious number of byblows managed by Augustus the Strong – though I was surprised there wasn't room for one on the peculiar delusions of Marshal Blucher (which reminds me, how had I never registered the name of Napoleon's subordinate Marshal Grouchy before? In this definitive and illuminating history, Colin Jones walks us through the city that was a plague-infested charnel house during the Middle Ages, the bloody epicenter of the French Revolution, the muse of nineteenth-century Impressionist painters, and much more. They argued vigorously over imperial expansion, constitutional power, personal liberty, and public morality. John Julius Norwich] remembered that there was a public composed of people who read books of history for pleasure, not from duty . Before 1848, France had been ruled by the 'July Monarchy', a liberal regime without democratic participation.

The first compact recent history of the period in English, this book reveals that although the French experimented with two Monarchies and a Republic (1814 - 48), there was substantial stability. Elsewhere a footnote will sometimes give a tantalising glimpse before snatching it away, as when Norwich suggests we Google Dr William Buckland, the pioneering palaeontologist who also ate the heart of the Sun King. We have spoken to several French experts including Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, a leading philosopher and sociologist about books on State, Power and Violence and Thomas Piketty, an economist, gave recommendations on the best books on historical change and economic ideology. The author attributes his love of France to childhood travels and to his early life in France and the book reflects that passion. From the French Revolution—after which neither France, nor the world, would be the same again—to the storming of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes and villains, battles and rebellion, stories so enthralling that Norwich declared, “I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed writing a book more.In my own three schools we were taught only about the battles we won: Crécy and Poitiers, Agincourt and Waterloo.