France Memoir

Dans ce livre unique, qui propose des réflexions personnelles, spirituelles et historiques – dont certaines n'ont jamais été partagées auparavant –, Sa Sainteté le dalaï-lama raconte l'histoire de sa lutte contre la Chine pour sauver le Tibet et son peuple pendant plus de soixante-quinze ans. Le dalaï-lama a dû lutter contre la République populaire de Chine toute sa vie.

Very few people know that Mark Twain wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important, but also his best work. He spent 12 years in research and many months in France doing archival work, and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell.

In a definitive biography of the mythic general who refused to accept Nazi domination of France, Julian Jackson captures this titanic figure as never before. Drawing on unpublished letters, memoirs, and resources of the recently opened de Gaulle archive, he reveals how this volatile visionary put a broken France back at the center of world affairs.

ONE WOMAN'S ODYSSEY OF LIFE AND LOVE ACROSS NAZI GERMANY AND POSTWAR EUROPE “I want to live an extraordinary life.” Inge Krumm-Heller yearned to live the life of a modern, independent woman in Nazi Germany. From her childhood in East Prussia and labor service with the Reichsarbeitsdienst, to the hardships and air raids of the Second World War, Inge emerged ready to face a bold new world turned upside down by the American occupation. When a mysterious stranger brings news of Inge’s missing parents, she embarks upon an odyssey across the ruins of Europe to find them and, ultimately, to...

Catherine de Medici's father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement's exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, diplomat par excellence, and contemporary of Machiavelli, Francis was the founder of modern France, whose sheer force of will and personality molded his kingdom into the first European superpower. Arguably the man who introduced the Renaissance to France, Francis was also the prototype Frenchman - a national identity was modeled on his character.

Heiress to the nearly 40-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the 14th wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At 94, she was embroiled in what has been called the Bettencourt Affair, a scandal that dominated the headlines in France. Why? It’s a tangled web of hidden secrets, divided loyalties, frayed relationships, and fractured families, set in the most romantic city - and involving the most glamorous industry - in the world.

In the midst of the devastating Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight, fresh from combat in Scotland finds his wife, Marguerite, accusing squire Jacques Le Gris of brutally raping her. A deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” that also leaves Marguerite’s fate in the balance. For if her husband loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser. While enemy troops pillage the land, and rebellion and plague threaten the lives of all, Carrouges and Le Gris meet in full armor on a walled field in Paris.

In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood.

Described as both “one of the most important novels ever written” and “the gospel of evil,” 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded execution, and inspired the word “sadism,” which came to mean receiving pleasure from pain. Despite all his crimes, Sade considered this work to be his greatest transgression.

Lauren’s life story is a raw and gripping journey through the darker side of human experience. With the false freedom of quick cash and the harsh reality of hitting rock bottom, Lauren's quest for independence and survival is both intense and inspiring. When adversity strikes, she reaches out for help but encounters predators at every turn, each encounter shaping her understanding of herself and the world. Reflecting on her troubled childhood in a small town, Lauren's narrative captures the delicate balance between innocence and exploitation, strength and vulnerability. Through vivid and ...

“Faced with the political disaster, I had to become France.” This was how Charles de Gaulle answered the call of history. One of the few French battlefield leaders to have distinguished himself in May 1940, he had become the undersecretary of state for national defense. But when the government rejected his calls to fight on and prepared to capitulate to Hitler, he escaped to London. There he instigated a resistance calling on “all the French who want to remain free to listen to me and follow me” in the legendary radio address of June 22.

"In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling account of how Benjamin Franklin - 70 years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French - convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy. When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues....

In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African-American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate 16th-century villagers.

The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.

On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place of his brother King Charles, who had gone mad. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, the city's chief law enforcement officer - and one of history's first detectives. As de Tignonville began to investigate, he realized that his hunt for the truth was much more dangerous than he ever could have imagined.

On Valentine's day 2004, Marco Pantani was found dead in a cheap hotel. It defied belief: Pantani, having won the rare double of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1998, was regarded as the only cyclist capable of challenging Lance Armstrong's dominance. Only later did it emerge that Pantani had been addicted to cocaine since 1999. Drawing on his personal encounters with Pantani, as well as exclusive access to his psychoanalysts, and interviews with his family and friends, Matt Rendell has produced the definitive account of an iconic sporting figure.

In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain - soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France. We remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. Over more than 30 years he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America.

From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre, en route to Paris, in the fall of 1948, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn't speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu.