Lilac and Flag

Written by John Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 188 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 27, 1992
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-73719-3 (0-679-73719-7)

Berger renders the movement of a people and the passing of a way of life in his masterwork, the Into Their Labours trilogy. With Lilac and Flag, the Alpine village of the two earlier volumes has been forsaken for the mythic city of Troy. Here, amidst the shantytowns, factories, and opulent... Read more >

Once in Europa

Written by John Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 27, 1992
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-73716-2 (0-679-73716-2)

The second volume in the Into Their Labours trilogy, Once in Europa is a luminous collection of interwoven stories which serves as a portrait of two worlds--a small Alpine village bound to the earth and by tradition, and the restless, future-driven culture that will inevitably invade it. The instrument of entrapment... Read more >

Pig Earth

Written by John Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 27, 1992
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73715-5 (0-679-73715-4)

With this haunting first volume of his Into Their Labours trilogy, Berger begins his chronicle of the eclipse of peasant cultures in the twentieth century. Set in a small village in the French Alps, Pig Earth relates the stories of skeptical, hard-working men and fiercely independent women; of calves born and... Read more >

The Dark Valley
A Panorama of the 1930s
Written by Piers Brendon

Format: Trade Paperback, 848 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 8, 2002
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70808-4 (0-375-70808-1)

In this sweeping history, distinguished historian Piers Brendon brings the tragic, dismal days of the 1930s to life.

Like the classic work of Barbara Tuchman, The Dark Valley captures the vast scope of history as well as the minutia of everyday life, rendering a huge topic comprehensible and creating a gripping... Read more >

For the Soul of France
Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus
Written by Frederick Brown

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: February 8, 2011
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-27921-7 (0-307-27921-9)

In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870—71, a defeated and humiliated France split into cultural factions that ranged from those who embraced modernity to those who championed the restoration of throne and altar. This polarization–to which such iconic monuments as the Sacre-Coeur and the Eiffel Tower bear witness–intensified with... Read more >

No Regrets
The Life of Edith Piaf
Written by Carolyn Burke

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: March 22, 2011
Price: $27.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-26801-3 (0-307-26801-2)

The iconic French singer comes to life in this enthralling, definitive biography, which captures Edith Piaf’s immense charisma along with the time and place that gave rise to her unprecedented international career.

Raised by turns in a brothel, a circus caravan, and a working-class Paris neighborhood, Piaf began singing on the city’s... Read more >

Bad Faith
A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France
Written by Carmen Callil

Format: Trade Paperback, 672 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: December 4, 2007
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27925-5 (0-307-27925-1)

Bad Faith tells the story of one of history’s most despicable villains and con men—Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Nazi collaborator and “Commissioner for Jewish Affairs” in France’s Vichy government.

Darquier set about to eliminate Jews in France with brutal efficiency, delivering 75,000 men, women, and children to the Nazis and confiscating Jewish... Read more >

The French Revolution
A History
Written by Thomas Carlyle
Introduction by John D. Rosenberg

Format: Trade Paperback, 848 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: May 14, 2002
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-76022-8 (0-375-76022-9)

The book that established Thomas Carlyle’s reputation when first published in 1837, this spectacular historical masterpiece has since been accepted as the standard work on the subject. It combines a shrewd insight into character, a vivid realization of the picturesque, and a singular ability to bring the past to blazing life... Read more >

The Age of Conversation

Written by Benedetta Craveri

Format: Trade Paperback, 508 pages
Publisher: New York Review Books
On Sale: August 1, 2006
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-214-8 (1-59017-214-0)

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between the reign of Louis XIII and the Revolution, French aristocratic society developed an art of living based on a refined code of good manners.

Conversation, which began as a way of passing time, eventually became the central ritual of social life. In the salons... Read more >

Murder In Memoriam

Written by Didier Daeninckx
Translated by Liz Heron

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Melville International Crime
On Sale: October 16, 2012
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-61219-146-1 (1-61219-146-0)

On the evening of October 17, 1961 twenty-thousand Algerians marched in Paris in defiance of and in protest against a curfew imposed by Maurice Papon, chief of the Paris Metropolitan Police. The protesters were met with ferocious and uninhibited violence. Eleven-thousand were arrested; more than one thousand injured; as many as... Read more >

The Old Regime and the French Revolution

Written by Alexis De Tocqueville

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: October 1, 1955
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-09260-9 (0-385-09260-1)

Translated by Stuart Gilbert.
This translation of Tocqueville's masterpiece, origianlly published in 1856, is a monumental study of the French Revolution and an essential counterpart to Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Tocqueville's brilliant examination explores the origins, course and consequences of the French Revolution.

Stuart Gilbert's translation of Tocqueville's 1856 masterpiece is a... Read more >

Memoirs of a Breton Peasant

Written by Jean-Marie Deguignet
Translated by Linda Asher

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
On Sale: October 18, 2011
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-60980-346-9 (1-60980-346-9)

A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards... Read more >

William Marshal

Written by Georges Duby

Format: Trade Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: February 12, 1987
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-75154-2 (0-394-75154-X)

Georges Duby has brought to life with exceptional brilliance and imagination William Marshal, adviser to the Pantagenets, knight extraordinaire, the flower of chivalry. A marvel of historical reconstruction, William Marshal is based on a biographical poem written in the 13th century, and offers an evocation of chivalric life--the contests and tournaments... Read more >

Two Towns in Provence

Written by M.F.K. Fisher

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 12, 1983
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-71631-2 (0-394-71631-0)


Two Towns in Provence brings together M.F.K. Fisher's classic and unforgettable portraits of Aix-en-Provence and Marseille.

"Map of Another Town," this memoir of the French provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence is, as the author tells us, "my picture, my map, of a place and therefore of myself...just as much of its reality is... Read more >

The Birth of the Clinic
An Archaeology of Medical Perception
Written by Michel Foucault

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 29, 1994
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75334-6 (0-679-75334-6)

The Birth of Clinic charts the dramatic transformation of medical knowledge which took place in the eighteenth century, when medicine took on a precision that had formerly belonged only to mathematics. The body became something that could be mapped.  Disease became subject to new rules of classification.  And doctors began to describe phenomena... Read more >

Discipline & Punish
The Birth of the Prison
Written by Michel Foucault

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 25, 1995
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75255-4 (0-679-75255-2)

Using academic works and legal documents dating back to the early 1700s, Foucault constructs a history of punishment, beginning with the spectacle of corporal punishment and public execution and ending with the institution of the modern prison.  He argues that over the course of approximately eighty years (between the torture and execution... Read more >

Herculine Barbin

Written by Michel Foucault

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 12, 1980
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-73862-8 (0-394-73862-4)

Introduction by Michel Foucault. With an eye for the sensual bloom of young schoolgirls, and the torrid style of the romantic novels of her day, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as an hermaphrodite. She was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered... Read more >

Love and Louis XIV
The Women in the Life of the Sun King
Written by Antonia Fraser

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: November 6, 2007
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3374-4 (1-4000-3374-8)

Louis XIV, the highly-feted “Sun King”, was renowned for his political and cultural influence and for raising France to a new level of prominence in seventeenth-century Europe. And yet, as Antonia Fraser keenly describes, he was equally legendary in the domestic sphere. Indeed, a panoply of women — his wife Anne... Read more >

Marie Antoinette
The Journey
Written by Antonia Fraser

Format: Trade Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: November 12, 2002
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-48949-2 (0-385-48949-8)

France’s beleaguered queen, Marie Antoinette, wrongly accused of uttering the infamous “Let them eat cake,” was the subject of ridicule and curiosity even before her death; she has since been the object of debate and speculation and the fascination so often accorded tragic figures in history. Married in mere girlhood, this... Read more >

Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire

Written by Flora Fraser

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: March 9, 2010
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27793-0 (0-307-27793-3)

From acclaimed biographer Flora Fraser, the brilliant life of Napoleon's favorite sister, with color photos, paintings, and illustrations.

Considered by many in Europe to be the most beautiful woman at the turn of the nineteenth century, Pauline Bonaparte Borghese shocked the continent with the boldness of her love affairs, her opulent... Read more >

Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen

Written by Pierre Goubert

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 12, 1972
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-71751-7 (0-394-71751-1)

A new approach, exploring the interrelationship between the people of a country and the power of its king.

"This masterful work...should serve a generation of student and general readers as the essential introduction to the France of Louis XIV."--The American Historical Review

"In this field M. Goubert is a past master, and his... Read more >

The Age of Revolution: 1749-1848

Written by Eric Hobsbawm

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 26, 1996
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77253-8 (0-679-77253-7)

Between 1789 and 1848 the world was transformed by both the French Revolution and by the Industrial Revolution that originated in Britain. In The Age of Revolution, the first of his four volume world history, Hobsbawm traces with characteristic analytical clarity the changes brought about in every sphere of European life... Read more >

I Wish I'd Been There (R)
Book Two: European History
Edited by Byron Hollinshead and Theodore K. Rabb

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: June 2, 2009
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-27764-0 (0-307-27764-X)

“What is the scene or incident in European history that you would like to have witnessed-and why?”

In this companion to I Wish I'd Been There: Twenty Historians Bring to Life the Dramatic Events that Changed America, some of our finest historical writers now turn their attention to Europe, with lively and... Read more >

Apollo's Angels
A History of Ballet
Written by Jennifer Homans

Format: Trade Paperback, 672 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: November 29, 2011
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6874-3 (0-8129-6874-3)

Finalist, 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Named one of “The 10 Best Books of 2010” by the editors of the New York Times Book Review
A 2011 Choice "Outstanding Academic Title"
A 2012 American Library Association Notable Book for Adults (Nonfiction)

For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has... Read more >

La Belle France

Written by Alistair Horne

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 6, 2006
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3487-1 (1-4000-3487-6)

La Belle France is a sweeping, grand narrative written with all the verve, erudition, and vividness that are the hallmarks of the acclaimed British historian Alistair Horne. It recounts the hugely absorbing story of the country that has contributed to the world so much talent, style, and political innovation.

Beginning with... Read more >