How the occupation of a watch factory became one of the iconic labor struggles after May 1968 In 1973, faced with massive layoffs, workers at the legendary Lip watch firm in Besançon, France, occupied their factory to demand that no one lose their job. They seized watches and watch parts, assembled and sold watches, and paid their own salaries. Their actions recaptured the ideals of May 1968, when 11 million workers had gone on strike to demand greater autonomy and to overturn the status quo. Educated by ’68, the men and women at the Besançon factory formed committees to control every aspect of what became a national struggle. Female employees developed a working-class feminism, combating workplace sexual harassment and male control of the union. The endurance of the Lip movement and its appeal through the 1970s came from its rich democratic, participatory culture. The factory workers welcomed supporters and engaged with them, an expression of solidarity between blue-collar and student activists that built on the legacy of 1968. Opening the Gates: The Lip Affair, 1968–1981 is the first account of all facets of the experience, drawing extensively on unpublished materials to reconstruct the vision and practice of those involved. The Lip workers’ struggle was the last widespread expression in France of the belief that creativity and moral autonomy are the driving force of social transformation. It brought about what Sartre called “the extension of the field of possibilities”—not just for workers, but for all those who gave the movement support and meaning.

At the end of World War II, France’s greatest challenge was to repair a civil society torn asunder by Nazi occupation and total war. Recovery required the nation’s complete economic and social transformation. But just what form this “new France” should take remained the burning question at the heart of French political combat until the Algerian War ended, over a decade later. Herrick Chapman charts the course of France’s long reconstruction from 1944 to 1962, offering fresh insights into the ways the expansion of state power, intended to spearhead recovery, produced fierce controversies at home and unintended consequences abroad in France’s crumbling empire. Abetted after Liberation by a new elite of technocratic experts, the burgeoning French state infiltrated areas of economic and social life traditionally free from government intervention. Politicians and intellectuals wrestled with how to reconcile state-directed modernization with the need to renew democratic participation and bolster civil society after years spent under the Nazi and Vichy yokes. But rather than resolving the tension, the conflict between top-down technocrats and grassroots democrats became institutionalized as a way of framing the problems facing Charles de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic. Uniquely among European countries, France pursued domestic recovery while simultaneously fighting full-scale colonial wars. France’s Long Reconstruction shows how the Algerian War led to the further consolidation of state authority and cemented repressive immigration policies that now appear shortsighted and counterproductive.

In Europe, coal was by far the most important source of energy from the beginning of industrialisation until well after the Second World War. It was indispensable in shaping the modern world, and in altering our understanding of time and space. Used foundationally in organic chemistry, coal helped to create the multitude of colours, medicines, and man-made products which still shape our daily lives. Without coal, the First and Second World Wars would have looked very different, and in the peace conferences after both wars, the control of this resource was of central importance. At its height, coal mining in Europe employed almost two and a half million people, mostly men, who had often migrated over vast distances to find work in this booming industry, despite the difficulties and dangers. As a result of the capitalist model of the industry, mining saw significant labour organization and strikes. The use of coal, however, created environmental problems. During and after industrialisation, the demand for energy multiplied, and coal was the only resource that could satisfy this increasing demand, despite the high levels of CO2 emission. In contemporary society, world-wide attempts are being made to reduce these emissions, but while in Europe, coal mining and use has declined, world-wide its production and consumption have reached new heights. Even in Europe, coal's major legacy persists: society's dependence on vast amounts of easily available, transportable, and affordable energy. Franz-Josef Brüggemeier uses modern Europe's reliance on coal to tell a wide-ranging story of how energy can shape a society.

In contrast to the explanations of both economic "realists," who attribute deindustrialization to market forces and economic geography, and regional nationalists, who see a betrayal of Lower Languedoc by its bourgeoisie whose investments took the easy path to the vine rather than staying the course with industry, Johnson shows that woolens production remained vital through mid-century. The dimension that must be added, he argues, is the political. Workers in Languedoc developed a powerful labor and democratic socialist movement against an intransigent class of employers. That movement rocked the region, as well as the nation, from 1848-1851. Dramatic as it may have been, this upheaval also proved to be the catalyst stimulating the disfavor of the French state and the consumer alike, and the ineluctable process of decline set in.

There is more than a slight malaise in the air these days about French food and cooking. While the rest of the world delights in the intricacies of molecular gastronomy and even Britain is revelling in a culinary renaissance, in France the years of worship at the temple of the great god Michelin seem to have blinded them to change and evolution. Why is this? What is it about the French that causes them to be so blinkered about their food? Plats du Jour is an attempt to answer that question, as William Black explores the highways and byways of French cooking. Taking as his starting point the great tradition of French food, William tackles years of received wisdom and parochial food snobbery head on, though with his mind (and his mouth) firmly open... He eats tête de veau and fried cow's udder with his French wife's family near Orléans. He samples the dubious (and illegal) delights of ortolan in the south west and has the most painfully disappointing gastronomic experience of his life. He combs the beaches of Brittany for seafood and is chased away from a festival by an enraged Basque villager. His dedication to the culinary cause knows few bounds. Plats du Jour is a book which the French aren't going to like very much. That said, it's a highly entertaining and irreverent look at the world's greatest culinary tradition which will be required reading for anyone with an interest in food and cooking...

This study of the evolution of labour movements in the US and France from 1876 to 1914, illuminates the turn to syndicalism in France and craft unionism in the USA, and the impact each form of unionization had on the shaping of the French and the US states.