Pierre Deux's French country

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Eda Kranakis

"If it is true, as Tocqueville suggested, that social and class systems shape technology, research, and knowledge, then the effects should be visible both at the individual level and at the level of technical institutions and local environments. That is the central issue addressed in Constructing a Bridge, a tale of two cultures that investigates how national traditions shape technological communities and their institutions and become embedded in everyday engineering practice. Eda Kranakis first examines these issues in the work of two suspension bridge designers of the early nineteenth century: the American inventor James Finley and the French engineer Claude-Louis-Marie-Henri Navier. Finley—who was oriented toward the needs of rural, frontier communities—designed a bridge that could be easily reproduced and constructed by carpenters and blacksmiths. Navier—whose professional training and career reflected a tradition of monumental architecture and had linked him closely to the Parisian scientific community—designed an elegant, costly, and technically sophisticated structure to be built in an elite district of Paris. Charting the careers of these two technologists and tracing the stories of their bridges, Kranakis reveals how local environments can shape design goals, research practices, and design-to-construction processes. Kranakis then offers a broader look at the technological communities and institutions of nineteenth-century France and America and at their ties to technological practice. She shows how conditions that led to Finley's and Navier's distinct designs also fostered different systems of technical education as well as distinct ideologies and traditions of engineering research. The result of this two-tiered, comparative approach is a reorientation of a historiographic tradition initiated by Tocqueville (and explored more recently by Eugene Ferguson, John Kasson, and others) toward a finer-grained analysis of institutional and local environments as mediators between national traditions and individual styles of technological research and design."--

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Bertram Wyatt-Brown

Extending his investigation into the ethical life of the white American South beyond what he wrote in Southern Honor (1982), Bertram Wyatt-Brown explores three major themes in southern history: the political aspects of the South's code of honor, the increasing prominence of Protestant faith in white southerners' lives, and the devastating impact of war, defeat, and an angry loss of confidence during the post-Civil War era. This eloquent and richly textured study first demonstrates the psychological complexity of race relations, drawing new and provocative comparisons between American slave oppression and the Nazi concentration camp experience. The author then reveals how the rhetoric and rituals of honor affected the Revolutionary generation and--through a study of Andrew Jackson, dueling, and other demonstrations of manhood--how early American politicians won or lost popularity. In perhaps the most subtle and intriguing section of the book, he discloses the interconnections of honor and religious belief and practice. Finally, exploring the effects of war and defeat on former Confederates, Wyatt-Brown suggests that the rise of violent racism following the Civil War had significant links to the shame of military defeat and the spurious invocation of religious convictions. --Publisher description.

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Marie-Cécile Thoral

The French declaration of war on Austria on 20 April 1792 committed the nation to more than twenty years of war. Faced with a coalition of European powers, the revolutionaries called upon the citizenry to form a truly national army. The result was an unprecedented tightening of the bond between war and nation. That the conflict would have consequences for the very foundations of French society was inevitable given its sheer scale, duration, and geographical extent (the whole of continental Europe and beyond in the campaigns in Saint-Domingue and Egypt); its far-reaching impact on civilian society and commerce; and its forcible involvement of hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen. The theme of this book is the first-hand experience of French military and civilians during these conflicts, seen through their eyes and using their testimony, as well as an assessment of the place of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts in the evolution of the art of warfare, and the elements of modernity which made them the first example of 'total war'.

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Alex Hughes and Keith Reader

The international team of contributors and consultants have provided over 700 entries offering wide-ranging coverage and crossing the traditional boundaries between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. French culture is defined in its broadest sense and areas covered include: economy, education, film, food and wine, gender and sexuality, intellectual life, language and identity, literature, media, music, performing arts, politics, religion, society, and visual arts. Entries range from shorter, factual contributions to longer overview essays, and provide an essential context for anyone studying French, readers with an interest in critical theory and anyone pursuing comparative studies in European culture.