This is a very personal book. It is about the author's reaction to France and French history of the last hundred years, rather than a straight history. He knows both intimately, and so he can be trusted. The varieties of French experience —the Belle Epoque, the secular school, the intellectuals and the politicians in both world wars, the literati, the Jews, the Resistance and Occupation, contemporary figures and trends— are illuminated in a style both individual and accessible.