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Loading... A Brief History of Franceby Cecil Jenkins
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  alexbolding | Nov 1, 2021 |  no reviews | add a review
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When we think of France we often evoke images of fine food and wine, the elegant boulevards of Paris, the chic beaches of St Tropez. Yet, as the largest country in Europe, it is a place of huge diversity. The idea of 'Frenchness' emerged from over 2000 years of history and it is a riveting story from Roman conquest to the present day. Cecil Jenkins tells the story of the formation of this nation through its people, great events and culture. Through this narrative he charts why the French began to see themselves as so different from the rest of Europe and why, today, they face the same problems of identity as many other nations. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)944History & geography History of Europe France and MonacoLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.17)
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Wikipedia in English
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In fifteen short chapters Jenkins presents and analyses the social and cultural fabric of France, painting in thick and brightly coloured lines for early history (one chapter to bring us from Cro-Magnon man up to the Middle Ages; one bridging chapter to deal with the one hundred years war, delving deeper and elucidating more detail from the Sun King, Louis XIV, onwards).
What Jenkins does particularly well is to combine incisive, critical analysis of political developments with short biographies of key figures and linking the trends and actions of key movers with socio-economic and cultural developments (in society, literature, art, philosophy). As we approach the present-day, the tapestry becomes more detailed and intricate, with Jenkins spending the last half of the book (7.5 chapters) on the 20th and 21st century. I read the book simultaneously with a Gettyimages picture book on the last millennium of France, thus benefitting from a veritable flood of apt imagery to accompany Jenkins’ text. That is also my main criticism on this excellent history of France – it lacks pictures and maps (only two maps have been included, no pictures). (