A captivating literary and historical record, Jean Giono's Occupation Journal offers a glimpse into life in collaborationist France during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes and thoughts of one of France's greatest and most independent writers. Written during the years of France's occupation by the Nazis, Jean Giono's Occupation Journal reveals the inner workings of one of France's great literary minds during one of the country's darkest hours. A renowned writer and committed pacifist throughout the 1930s--a conviction that resulted in his imprisonment before and after the Occupation--Giono spent the war in the village of Contadour in Provence, where he wrote, corresponded with other writers, and cared for his consumptive daughter. This journal records his musings on art and literature, his observations of life, his interactions with the machinery of the collaborationist Vichy regime, as well as his forceful political convictions. Giono recounts the details of his life with fierce independence of thought and novelistic attention to character and dialogue. Occupation Journal is a fascinating historical document as well as a unique window into one of French literature's most voracious and critical minds.

Why did "microbe hunters" at the Pasteur Institute become the most important health experts in the French empire in the early twentieth century? Pasteur's Empire illustrates how French microbiologists transformed life in the colonies in the name of humanitarian public health, which often had grave consequences for those living under French rule.

Traces an idyllic French honeymoon trip while sharing lighthearted tips and advice on how to thrive as a traveler, in a book with hundreds of watercolor and line illustrations.

'Agnès Humbert bears devastating witness to her time ... An insider's account of the germination of the French Resistance' William Boyd 'Sober and testifying, sardonic and humorous ... A beautiful and powerful work of literature' The Times In the summer of 1940, as the German Occupation tightened its grip on Paris, Agnès Humbert helped to establish one of the first resistance cells. She had no experience in warfare: she was an art historian, as were most of her early comrades, colleagues from the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. All they had was an unquenchable desire to free their country from the horrors of Nazi occupation. Within a year the group was publishing a news bulletin, helping allied airmen escape and passing military information back to London. Then came the catastrophe of betrayal, followed by arrest and interrogation, imprisonment and trial and, for Agnès, deportation to slave labour camp in Germany. Résistance is the secret journal of a woman who never gave up hope, even in the face of impossible odds.

A fascinating collective biography of six female scientists in eighteenth-century France, whose stories were largely written out of history "Of the 72 scientific names engraved on the Eiffel Tower, none is female. Omissions include the six Enlightenment women dubbed 'Minerva's sisters' by historian Nina Gelbart in her pioneering, evocative rescue."--Nature This book presents the stories of six intrepid Frenchwomen of science in the Enlightenment whose accomplishments--though celebrated in their lifetimes--have been generally omitted from subsequent studies of their period: mathematician and philosopher Elisabeth Ferrand, astronomer Nicole Reine Lepaute, field naturalist Jeanne Barret, garden botanist and illustrator Madeleine Françoise Basseporte, anatomist and inventor Marie-Marguerite Biheron, and chemist Geneviève d'Arconville. By adjusting our lens, we can find them. In a society where science was not yet an established profession for men, much less women, these six audacious and inspiring figures made their mark on their respective fields of science and on Enlightenment society, as they defied gender expectations and conventional norms. Their boldness and contributions to science were appreciated by such luminaries as Franklin, the philosophes, and many European monarchs. The book is written in an unorthodox style to match the women's breaking of boundaries.

A book on those who know and use two or more languages: Who are they? How do they do it?

From the provocative writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes comes volume one of her acclaimed trilogy of novels, Vernon Subutex—short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize and the basis for the TV series of the same name. But who is Vernon Subutex? Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Paris, where his name was legend throughout Paris. By the 2000s, however, with the arrival of the internet and the decline in CD and vinyl sales, his shop is struggling, like so many others. When it closes, Subutex finds himself with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Before long, his savings are gone, and when the mysterious rock star who had been covering his rent suddenly drops dead of a drug overdose, Subutex finds himself launched on an epic saga of couch-surfing, boozing, and coke-snorting before finally winding up homeless. Just as he resigns himself to life as a panhandler, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook takes the internet by storm. The word is out: Subutex is lugging around a bunch of VHS tapes shot by that same dead rock musician—his last recordings on this earth. Soon a crowd of wild characters, from screen writers to social media groupies, from porn stars to failed musicians to random misfits, are hot on Vernon's trail . . . but Vernon is none the wiser. "Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read. Everything about it is contemporary, right down to the fearless woman author who doesn't think of herself as a feminist and gives an impression at least in interviews of habitually killing rapists." —Nell Zink, Bustle, "The Best Books Of The 2010s"

Escape to the streets of Paris for a day-long romp. Through a series of humorous journal entries and photos, an American traveler chronicles a day on the islands in the center of Paris - the Île Saint-Louis and Ile de la Cité. She narrowly escapes dropping 50 Euro at the flower market for a potted plant she can?t take on a plane, debates public make out sessions with the King of France, pulls a Jean Valjean and swipes a basket of bread, and witnesses a love-at-first-sight moment between two dogs. The Paris Journal brings the city, its people and apparently its former Kings to life.

?This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . . Not by accident, not by mistake, but called by his name and killed with preference.? So wrote Germaine Tillion in Le Monde shortly after Mouloud Feraoun?s assassination by a right wing French terrorist group, the Organisation Armäe Secr_te, just three days before the official cease-fire ended Algeria?s eight-year battle for independence from France. However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could prevent Feraoun?s journal from being published. Journal, 1955?1962 appeared posthumously in French in 1962 and remains the single most important account of everyday life in Algeria during decolonization. Feraoun was one of Algeria?s leading writers. He was a friend of Albert Camus, Emmanuel Robl_s, Pierre Bourdieu, and other French and North African intellectuals. A committed teacher, he had dedicated his life to preparing Algeria?s youth for a better future. As a Muslim and Kabyle writer, his reflections on the war in Algeria afford penetrating insights into the nuances of Algerian nationalism, as well as into complex aspects of intellectual, colonial, and national identity. Feraoun?s Journal captures the heartbreak of a writer profoundly aware of the social and political turmoil of the time. This classic account, now available in English, should be read by anyone interested in the history of European colonialism and the tragedies of contemporary Algeria.

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