Just to add to the great reviews for Rod Kedward's FRANCE AND THE FRENCH posted here, this front page review from the San Diego Union-Tribune just landed on my desk... Some choice quotes:Regarding the riots in the French suburbs in the fall of 2005:
“Still trying to figure out the French? Rod Kedward's "France and the French: A Modern History" will help. Packed with so many details that the reader is torn between shock and awe, this single volume is close to the definitive history of 20th-century France for the non-French speaker. Kedward...renders a valuable service through his encyclopedic portrayal of our difficult, contradictory, oldest ally across the Atlantic.”
“Kedward's vignettes are the book's greatest strength. He is a master of capturing French sentiment, politics and culture through the story of an individual, film, monument or brief moment in time.”
“The similarity of the current Franco-French battles, including the riots that swept France this past fall, and those Kedward documents throughout his book is striking. Dissonance among French citizens on all sides of the debate over how to resolve crises in housing conditions, equal opportunity of education, cultural and religious differences and unemployment is not new. Nor is the national frenzy over the links between unemployed and poverty-stricken North Africans, crime and violence. The young denizens of these communities are, in Kedward's words, "totally alienated from the meaning and benefits of citizenship," viewing themselves as "forgotten people, the unrecognized and the unrepresented." At the same time, those not living in these areas are increasingly concerned about the violence and division of French cities along racial lines "on the scale of certain American cities."”Photo courtesy of the Union-Tribune.
--John Mark
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