Martin Turnell's The Rise of the French Novel is a successor to his highly praised earlier books, The Novel in France (1951) and The Art of French Fiction (1959). His aim now, however, is somewhat different, as can be seen from the title. It is well known that the reputations of many writers, novelists especially, diminish for a period following their deaths. Although in the eighteenth century Marivaux, Crébillon fils, and Rousseau all enjoyed a great deal of popularity during their lifetimes, it is only recently that they have been subject to truly searching studies. Yet they remain little read in English-speaking countries. Turnell emphasizes that in spite of the hostility of French critics and the fact that the novel did not reach its supremacy even in France until the nineteenth century, the beginning of its great rise was indeed with such writers as these. Their strong influence led such nineteenth-century novelists as Stendhal and Flaubert to all kinds of changes related to style, the enormous increase in the range of subject matter, and the marked development of language. Flaubert is the most striking example. It was pointed out some time ago by Eisenstein that Madame Bovary anticipates cinematic technique. One of Turnell's most interesting chapters explores the connections between the novel and film in general, and Madame Bovary in particular. In our own time, two of the most popular French novelists in both the United States and England are Alain-Fournier and Radiguet. They are given enthusiastic appreciations in Turnell's thoughtful book.

On 10 May 1940, the French possessed one of the largest air forces in the world. On paper, it was nearly as strong as the RAF. Six weeks later, France had been defeated. For a struggling French Army desperately looking for air support, the skies seemed empty of friendly planes. In the decades that followed, the debate raged. Were there unused stockpiles of planes? Were French aircraft really so inferior? Baughen examines the myths that surround the French defeat. He explains how at the end of the First World War, the French had possessed the most effective air force in the world, only for the lessons learned to be forgotten. Instead, air policy was guided by radical theories that predicted air power alone would decide future wars. Baughen traces some of the problems back to the very earliest days of French aviation. He describes the mistakes and bad luck that dogged the French efforts to modernise their air force in the twenties and thirties. He examines how decisions made just months before the German attack further weakened the air force. Yet defeat was not inevitable. If better use had been made of the planes that were available, the result might have been different.

A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on “the periphery.” As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.

This book challenges several traditional assumptions about the development of the French novel, notably that the novel is a bourgeois art form that rose and flourished along with the rise of the bourgeoisie; and that the novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were inevitable stepping stones on the road to the apotheosis of realism realized in the novels of Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. Instead, the author argues that the early French novel articulated the French aristocracy's claims to natural ascendancy against an encroaching middle class. But like any other literary form, the novel produces and is a product of ideology, and it reveals the contradictions lying beneath the surface of an apparently seamless social structure. After the death of Louis XIV and the resulting social and political redefinition of the aristocracy, the ideological rifts in the novel's form enabled it to shift its class affiliations with the changing times. French cultural life was increasingly tinged with values determined by new configurations in the control and transmission of property, including new constraints on women's sexual behavior. Fiction that claimed for itself a rightful place in the real world began to appear. As it had during the seventeenth century, fiction continued to negotiate complex social contradictions and label as malevolent any person or group that seemed to threaten social order, notably the immoderate woman who flouted traditional conceptions of virtue and threatened to read the social fabric. This new account of the rise of the French novel is enriched throughout by close readings of both well-known and obscure novels, including d'Urfe;'s L'Astre;e, Gomberville's Polexandre, Furetière's Le Roman bourgeois, Pre;vost's Manon Lescaut, Diderot's La Religieuse, and Sade's Justine.

A "delicious" (Dorie Greenspan), "genial" (Kirkus Reviews), "very cool book about the intersections of food and history" (Michael Pollan)—as featured in the New York Times "The complex political, historical, religious and social factors that shaped some of [France's] . . . most iconic dishes and culinary products are explored in a way that will make you rethink every sprinkling of fleur de sel." —The New York Times Book Review Acclaimed upon its hardcover publication as a "culinary treat for Francophiles" (Publishers Weekly), A Bite-Sized History of France is a thoroughly original book that explores the facts and legends of the most popular French foods and wines. Traversing the cuisines of France's most famous cities as well as its underexplored regions, the book is enriched by the "authors' friendly accessibility that makes these stories so memorable" (The New York Times Book Review). This innovative social history also explores the impact of war and imperialism, the age-old tension between tradition and innovation, and the enduring use of food to prop up social and political identities. The origins of the most legendary French foods and wines—from Roquefort and cognac to croissants and Calvados, from absinthe and oysters to Camembert and champagne—also reveal the social and political trends that propelled France's rise upon the world stage. As told by a Franco-American couple (Stéphane is a cheesemonger, Jeni is an academic) this is an "impressive book that intertwines stories of gastronomy, culture, war, and revolution. . . . It's a roller coaster ride, and when you're done you'll wish you could come back for more" (The Christian Science Monitor).

The Other Rise of the Novel relies on new research concerning the relevance of bourgeois values and ideals in the early modern period in France to question the extent to which characters in works of fiction portray the rise of individualistic and self-interested behavior.