The second volume of Jean Lacouture’s acclaimed biography of Charles de Gaulle opens with the creation of the Fourth Republic in the aftermath of World War II and with the election of de Gaulle―the voice of Free France, the savior of the nation in war―as president of France. But the internal contradictions of the new constitution soon forced de Gaulle to resign, leaving France to a succession of short-lived and generally ineffective coalition governments. In 1958, with the outbreak of the bitter colonial war in Algeria, destiny beckoned again. De Gaulle offered himself as a mediator and in short order became president of the Council of Ministers, then president of the Firth Republic.
"Charles De Gaulle's leadership of the French while in exile during World War II cemented his place in history. In contemporary France, he is the stuff of legend, consistently acclaimed as the nation's pre-eminent historical figure. But paradoxes abound. For one thing, his personal popularity sits oddly with his social origins and professional background. Neither the Army nor the Catholic Church is particularly well-regarded in France today, as they are seen to represent antiquated traditions and values. So why, then, do the French nonetheless identify with, celebrate, and even revere this austere and devout Catholic, who remained closely wedded to military values throughout his life? The Shadow of the General resolves this mystery and explains how de Gaulle has come to occupy such a privileged position in the French imagination. Sudhir Hazareesingh's story of how an individual life was transformed into national myth also tells a great deal about the French collective self in the twenty-first century: its fractured memory, its aspirations to greatness, and its manifold anxieties. Indeed, alongside the tale of de Gaulle's legacy, the author unfolds a much broader narrative: the story of modern France."--Publisher's website.
As son of the second president of the United States, father to the minister to the Court of St. James, and grandfather to author Henry Adams, John Quincy Adams was part of an American dynasty. In his own career as secretary of state, President, senator, and congressman, Adams was an actor in some of the most dramatic events of the nineteenth century. In this biography, Lynn Hudson Parsons chronicles the life of one of America's most absorbing figures. From the day in 1778 when as a boy he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to France, to his last years as an eloquent opponent of his country's foreign and domestic policies, Adams was rarely detached from public affairs. And yet, this biography reveals Adams as a man never truly at home anywhere -- in Washington he was stubborn and reclusive, in Europe he was a phlegmatic ideologue, a bulldog among spaniels. His story parallels America's own.
Interpreting American Democracy in France is a study of the French savant, liberal, politician, and Americanist Edouard Laboulaye. Laboulaye, who was a professor at the College de France, is perhaps best known in America today as president of the Union Franco-Americaine, which raised funds in France for the Statute of Liberty. He was also well known to Americans in the nineteenth century, particularly for his staunch support of the Union in the American Civil War. He and his circle influenced French public opinion and were instrumental in preventing the government of Napoleon III from recognizing the Confederacy. After the Revolutions of 1848, the aftermath of which disillusioned him, a dominant theme in Laboulaye's writings was that America provided France with a model constitution that guaranteed individual liberties and a stable political system; it was his great hope that his country would follow this example. As France's leading Americanist, Laboulaye's energies were devoted to lectures on American history and politics and work on behalf of the North during the Civil War. He was also a translator of the works of those Americans for whom he had a special devotion: Franklin, Channing, and Mann. As a founding father of the Third Republic, Laboulaye drew great satisfaction from the fact that some principles drawn from the American political tradition were embodied in its constitutional laws. Additionally, Laboulaye was the first Frenchman to give a course on American history at a French university, and he later published a three-volume history of the United States, which stands as his masterpiece. He was a member of the liberal opposition to Napoleon III and after 1870 became active in the Third Republic, serving as deputy and later senator for life. In France Laboulaye is primarily known as a professor at the respected College de France, a position he maintained throughout his entire career, and as a member of the Institut de France. He was also president of the French Anti-Slavery Society. Laboulaye was, in fact, a savant of almost universal interests who held a place at the center of French intellectual life during the Second Empire and the early Third Republic. His bibliography, comprised of books, pamphlets, essays, children's stories, and articles, totals over two hundred entries. His final years as a senator for life were devoted in large part to a successful fundraising campaign for the Statute of Liberty, which he did not live to see erected in New York Harbor, and to carrying on the fight for political liberty as he envisioned it. . This book is based on extensive research into the unpublished papers of Laboulaye, which are still in his family's possession, and manuscripts in other depositories in France and the United States.
"This is the first detailed study of the political significance of the seventeenth century's most notorious and sensational court scandal, the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. The book rejects earlier approaches to the history of court scandal, assuming neither that scandal inevitably undermined royal authority nor that courtiers' salacious behaviour was politically irrelevant. Instead, the book adopts a multilayered, interdisciplinary approach to the Overbury affair and its complex political meanings. It explores the factional politics that made and destroyed Overbury and his murderers, reconstructs the news culture through which information about the scandal circulated, analyses the creation and composition of the early Stuart 'public', and decodes the representations of the affair that were produced and consumed during 1615-16 and in subsequent decades. By situating the Overbury case in both short- and long-term political contexts, the book suggests that court scandal deserves a place among the cultural origins of the English revolution."--BOOK JACKET.
De Gaulle by Jean Lacouture | Literally Just Books
