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By Root 989 0

Prize finalist in biography in 1983) and William Somerset Maugham (a National Book Award finalist in 1982). Whether he’s writing under the name de Gramont or Morgan, his articles and books are engaging and he’s an astute binational observer. Though this book on France is more than forty years old, it’s still meaningful and accurate. “France,” de Gramont writes, “like Adam, had been modeled by the finger of God, and was thus perfectly proportioned and balanced (at equal distance between the equator and the Pole), fertile of soil, and temperate of climate.” By virtue of living there the people were chosen, and l’hexagone had everything the people needed or desired. “This was the European Eden, as the Germans knew when they coined the expression ‘As happy as God in France.’ ”

The Identity of France in two volumes, History and Environment and People and Production, Fernand Braudel (HarperCollins, 1988, 1989) Braudel, who passed away in 1985, has been referred to as the “greatest of Europe’s historians.” He believed strongly in the necessity of world history, and his genius was in his ability to link people and events across all time periods in a single sentence. He once came up with the phrase “economic geography” to describe his approach to history. Braudel is better known for his monumental work The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Harper & Row, 1972, 1974), one of my favorite books of all time, but this book on France is equally unprecedented and fascinating.

Alistair Horne

Author and historian Sir Alistair Horne, who was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur in 1993 and received a knighthood in Britain in 2003 for his works on French history, has so brilliantly and engagingly written about France that I felt he deserved a space all his own here. His trilogy of books devoted to the three Franco-German conflicts over a seventy-year period are unmatched. The first volume in the series is The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–71; the second is The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, which has been continuously in print for nearly fifty years; and the third is To Lose a Battle: France 1940. All were originally published in hardcover in the sixties but are now available in paperback editions by Penguin. A read of just one of these outstanding books is revealing, but all three provide an eye-opening view of how the events were all related.

La Belle France: A Short History (Knopf, 2005; Vintage, 2006) is the book I would recommend on the history of France if forced to name only one. As Horne wisely notes in his introduction, “The pursuit of harmony, though by no means always attainable, is what France is about.” La Belle France is enormously engaging and comprehensive, and happily both the paperback and hardcover editions include color illustrations. Horne acknowledges that ever since he wrote the Price of Glory trilogy, he’s been enticed by the “dangerously ambitious project of attempting a full-scale History of that complex, sometimes exasperating, but always fascinating country—France.” However dangerous the ambition, readers of this short history will be grateful for his effort.

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (Viking, 1978) is equally thorough yet conversational, and Horne again proves his ability to portray the big picture and the major players as well as the everyday lives of ordinary people living through events.

Mission to Civilize: The French Way, Mort Rosenblum (Harcourt, 1986). Rosenblum was a senior foreign correspondent for the Associated Press in Paris when he wrote this enlightening book. He now lives on a houseboat on the Seine and has written a number of other very good books on French topics. This work is specifically devoted to the importance of la mission civilisatrice—i.e. the “civilizing mission” of colonization—to the French. Rosenblum explains many aspects of the seemingly contradictory French foreign policy: the difference between a mauvaise foi and mauvais caractère; the Rainbow Warrior bavure (bavure being a hitch or foul-up, notably by officials