Internationally renowned as the greatest authority on the French Revolution, Georges Lefebvre combined impeccable scholarship with a lively writing style. His masterly overview of the history of the French Revolution has taken its rightful place as the definitive account. A vivid narrative of events in France and across Europe is combined with acute insights into the underlying forces that created the dynamics of the revolution, as well as the personalities responsible for day-to-day decisions during this momentous period.
The classic book that restored the voices of ordinary people to our understanding of the French Revolution The Coming of the French Revolution remains essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of this great turning point in the formation of the modern world. First published in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War and suppressed by the Vichy government, this classic work explains what happened in France in 1789, the first year of the French Revolution. Georges Lefebvre wrote history “from below”—a Marxist approach—and in this book he places the peasantry at the center of his analysis, emphasizing the class struggles in France and the significant role they played in the coming of the revolution. Eloquently translated by the historian R. R. Palmer and featuring an introduction by Timothy Tackett that provides a concise intellectual biography of Lefebvre and a critical appraisal of the book, this Princeton Classics edition offers perennial insights into democracy, dictatorship, and insurrection.
by MICHEL FOUCAULT Everyone knows that in France there are few logicians but many historians of science; and that in the 'philosophical establishment' - whether teaching or research oriented - they have occupied a considerable position. But do we know precisely the importance that, in the course of these past fifteen or twenty years, up to the very frontiers of the establishment, a 'work' like that of Georges Canguilhem can have had for those very people who were separ ated from, or challenged, the establishment? Yes, I know, there have been noisier theatres: psychoanalysis, Marxism, linguistics, ethnology. But let us not forget this fact which depends, as you will, on the sociology of French intellectual environments, the functioning of our university institutions or our system of cultural values: in all the political or scientific discussions of these strange sixty years past, the role of the 'philosophers' - I simply mean those who had received their university training in philosophy department- has been important: perhaps too important for the liking of certain people. And, directly or indirectly, all or almost all these philosophers have had to 'come to terms with' the teaching and books of Georges Canguilhem. From this, a paradox: this man, whose work is austere, intentionally and carefully limited to a particular domain in the history of science, which in any case does not pass for a spectacular discipline, has somehow found him self present in discussions where he himself took care never to figure.
This ambitious study sets out to discover what marriage meant in the daily lives of the nobles of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Through entertaining anecdotes, family dramas, and striking quotations, Duby succeeds in bringing his subjects to life, making us feel as if we understand the motives and conflicts of those who inhabited the distant past. "It is typical of Duby's modest spirit and his book-long concern with the ancient status of beleaguered wives that he ends his study with a plea: 'We must not forget the women. Much has already been said about them. But how much do we really know?' Not everything, certainly, but far more than we did before the author began these charmingly erudite investigations."—Ken Turan, Time "It is refreshing to find a historian who is always conscious that we simply do not know what or how people thought 1000 years ago. . . . Duby explains the complicated machinations of the medieval churchman and the paterfamilias in a scholarly but lively style."—Sarah Lawson, New Statesman "Duby has written an extraordinarily rich book—a panoramic view of medieval marriage and the relations between men and women, full of arresting insights and human detail. . . . It is the work of a master historian at the peak of his powers on a subject of central relevance, compulsive and essential reading."—P. Stafford, British History Georges Duby (1919-1996) was a member of the Académie française and for many years held the distinguished chair in medieval history at the Collège de France. His books include The Three Orders; The Age of Cathedrals; The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest; Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages; and History Continues, all published by the University of Chicago Press.
The prophet of social decadence, the theorist of violence and advocate of the general strike, the critic who stood Marx on his head, Georges Sorel was one of the foremost writers of this century to write extensively on the great importance of the moral aspects of social movements. His reconstruction of socialist ethics established him as one of the most remarkable critics of Marxist thought, and his writings in many aspects anticipated contemporary interpretations. From Georges Sorel, the first of two volumes of Sorel's work, presents his major contributions to social thought articles on Marxism, religion, syndicalism, social myths, the philosophy of history and science, as well as a large and newly translated segment of "Reflections on Violence." In his introduction, John Stanley disputes the frequently encountered view of Sorel as a reactionary or extreme rightist, and emphasizes Sorel's attempt to provide Western society with a morality based on labor, struggle, and family life.
In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Fran?aise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion? it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art.? ? New York Times Book Review
Here, without any doubt, man is indeed the first of the organisms, when one tries to place in linear series all those which move on our planet. It is, also, not his relative position in the living world that it is difficult to discover; it is what we may call his true place. What is, in other terms, the value of the differences which separate man from other mammalia? and at what distance is he from the animal that immediately follows him in this linear series which we are supposing? To examine what man is with respect to the highest orders of mammalia, and in a more general manner, to animals, is the primordial question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical elements, absolutely submitted to the same exigences of development, nutrition, and reproduction, as animals. Ought not all this to make us think that we were not altogether made of so immaterial a substance as the philosophers have generally been satisfied to believe? This has not been the case. Two systems—two theories, are before us. The one pretends that man is but the first among animals, that he issimilar to them in the clear and precise sense in which this term is taken in geometry, designing qualities, which may differ ad infinitum, but which still may be comparable. Another system, supported by the most illustrious names, makes of man a sort of special entity, differing from other organised beings by the distinct and clear nature of his intelligence. It is an opinion adopted and defended to the last by a learned man, to whose memory we cannot, en passant, prevent ourselves from rendering the homage which is his due, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. We find in the second volume of his Histoire Naturelle Générale, almost a return to Cartesian ideas. According to him animals do not think, they possess only that sensibility that plants have not. And the celebrated naturalist agreed with the adoption of a human kingdom, appearing as the crowning-point of the organic and inorganic kingdoms, and as distinct from the second as this is from the third. Before proceeding further, we may be permitted to make one preliminary remark. We may thus declare it:— Proposition.—Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous Apes in his Physical Organism. Whether one is a partisan or not of the “Human Kingdom,” this resemblance is a fact which it will be in no person’s ideas to contest. And it is not merely in the external forms; we find it even greater if, going to the foundation of the facts, we give our attention to the essential parts composing the body,—to the anatomical elements,—to those delicate particles visible only in the microscope, and which always show, among animals of the same group, a marvellous uniformity. It is here where, if not an impossibility, at least a sort of contradiction presents itself to the defenders of the “human kingdom;” for there are two organisms, scarcely different, at the service of two directing powers, of two intelligences absolutely and radically dissimilar. Doubtless all the forces of organised matter are not known to us, but does not this resemblance, though even a superficial one, surprise us; and does it not seem that every organism constituted directly by reason of the influences which it is qualified to receive or to transmit, ought to vary like these influences, and in the same proportion? It is very easy to admit that there is more distance between the intelligence of man and that of the anthropomorphous apes, than between the intelligence of these last and that of the smooth-brained squirrel, and that at the same time the immense distance is only marked in the first case by very superficial variations of the organ of intellectual manifestations, whilst, in the second case, this lesser distance is explained by enormous differences.
Readers of economic and political theory as well as students of economic planning will appreciate this classic, now available for the first time in English. Written eighty years ago, when Sorel became disillusioned with the official socialism of the German and French Marxist parties, this new translation presents Sorel's analysis of the rise and fall of the two great modern ideologies: socialism and liberal capitalism. At present, when the fate of both of these ideologies seems in doubt, Sorel's analysis remains particularly insightful and fresh. Sorel explains why they seem to have fallen into disrepute just as they succeeded in an almost total monopoly of power in the advanced industrial countries of the world.Sorel notes a striking parallel in the historical evolution of both bodies of thought: productivity was the foremost ideal when both movements were at their most dynamic and socially effective stage. On the other hand, they were at their most decadent state when they no longer separated themselves from politics and embraced the ideals of social unity. This work is an attack on the time-honored notion of community solidarity whose Platonic and Aristotelian versions find their contemporary counterparts in notions of natural sociability and political obligation. This work anticipates much of the thinking that lies behind Sorel's famous Reflections on Violence and clearly expresses the moral basis of that work, as well as present tendencies in normative and empirical political thought.
The geological and osteological papers, published in 1812, of the influential early palaeontologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), discoverer of extinction.
Ornans, Courbet’s birthplace, is near the beautiful valley of the Doubs River, and it was here as a boy, and later as a man, that he absorbed the love of landscape. He was by nature a revolutionary, a man born to oppose existing order and to assert his independence; he had that quality of bluster and brutality which makes the revolutionary count in art as well as in politics. In both directions his spirit of revolt manifested itself. He went to Paris to study art, yet he did not attach himself to the studio of any of the prominent masters. Already in his country home he had had a little instruction in painting, and preferred to study the masterpieces of the Louvre. At first his pictures were not sufficiently distinctive to arouse any opposition, and were admitted to the Salon. Then followed the Funeral at Ornans, which the critics violently assailed: “A masquerade funeral, six metres long, in which there is more to laugh at than to weep over.” Indeed, the real offence of Courbet’s pictures was that they represented live flesh and blood. They depicted men and women as they really are and realistically doing the business in which they are engaged. His figures were not men and women deprived of personality and idealised into a type, posed in positions that will decorate the canvas. He advocated painting things as they are, and proclaimed that la vérité vraie must be the aim of the artist. So at the Universal Exposition of 1855 he withdrew his pictures from the exhibition grounds and set them in a wooden booth, just outside the entrance. Over the booth he posted a sign with large lettering. It read, simply: “Courbet – Realist.” Like every revolutionary, he was an extremist. He ignored the fact that to every artist the truth of nature appears under a different guise according to his way of seeing and experiencing. Instead, he adhered to the notion that art is only a copying of nature and not a matter also of selection and arrangement. In his contempt for prettiness Courbet often chose subjects which may fairly be called ugly. But that he also had a sense of beauty may be seen in his landscapes. That sense, mingled with his capacity for deep emotion, appears in his marines – these last being his most impressive work. Moreover, in all his works, whether attractive or not to the observer, he proved himself a powerful painter, painting in a broad, free manner, with a fine feeling for colour, and with a firmness of pigment that made all his representations very real and stirring.
The most influential work of French biologist and comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), Le Règne Animal, was published in French in 1817, and this sixteen-volume illustrated English version appeared between 1827 and 1835.
Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon One of the world 's most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small- time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon's spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon's tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life-until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.
“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A sensational tale of deceit and back-stabbing in an isolated community in which only Inspector Maigret can intervene “She came forward, the outlines of her figure blurred in the half-light....‘I gather you wish to talk to me, Inspector...but first of all please sit down...’ Her accent was more pronounced than Carl’s. Her voice sang, dropping on the last syllable of the longer words.” Maigret has been interrogating Carl Andersen for seventeen hours without a confession. He’s either innocent or a very good liar. So why was the body of a diamond merchant found at his isolated mansion? Why is his sister always shut away in her room? And why does everyone at Three Widows Crossroads have something to hide?
Georges-Louis Leclerc, le comte de Buffon's The Epochs of Nature, originally published as Les Époques de la Nature in 1778, is one of the first great popular science books, a work of style and insight that was devoured by Catherine the Great of Russia and influenced Humboldt, Darwin, Lyell, Vernadsky, and many other renowned scientists. It is the first geological history of the world, stretching from the Earth’s origins to its foreseen end, and though Buffon was limited by the scientific knowledge of his era—the substance of the Earth was not, as he asserts, dragged out of the sun by a giant comet, nor is the sun’s heat generated by tidal forces—many of his deductions appear today as startling insights. And yet, The Epochs of Nature has never before been available in its entirety in English—until now. In seven epochs, Buffon reveals the main features of an evolving Earth, from its hard rock substrate to the sedimentary layers on top, from the minerals and fossils found within these layers to volcanoes, earthquakes, and rises and falls in sea level—and he even touches on age-old mysteries like why the sun shines. In one of many moments of striking scientific prescience, Buffon details evidence for species extinction a generation before Cuvier’s more famous assertion of the phenomenon. His seventh and final epoch does nothing less than offer the first geological glimpse of the idea that humans are altering the very foundations of the Earth—an idea of remarkable resonance as we debate the designation of another epoch: the Anthropocene. Also featuring Buffon’s extensive “Notes Justificatives,” in which he offers further evidence to support his assertions (and discusses vanished monstrous North American beasts—what we know as mastodons—as well as the potential existence of human giants), plus an enlightening introduction by editor and translator Jan Zalasiewicz and historians of science Sverker Sörlin, Libby Robin, and Jacques Grinevald, this extraordinary new translation revives Buffon’s quite literally groundbreaking work for a new age.
His artistry is supreme' John Banville Certain details of the case were etched more sharply than others in Maigret's memory. Even years later he could recall the particular taste and smell of the rain shower in Rue Caulaincourt as keenly as a childhood memory. At a dinner party, Maigret recounts an old case in which Adrien Josset is found guilty and executed for the murder of his wife, Christine. As the case develops under the controlling hand of the magistrate, all clues point to Josset's guilt yet Maigret is left unconvinced following his one interview with him. Years after the case, Maigret still doubts the true identity of the murderer. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret Has Doubts. 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian
Maigret dismantles an intricate network of lies stretching from Paris to Nice in book twenty-three of the new Penguin Maigret series. A small, thin man, rather dull to look at, neither young nor old, exuding the stale smell of a bachelor who does not look after himself. He pulls his fingers and cracks his knuckles and tells his tale the way a schoolboy recites his lesson. A mysterious note predicting the murder of a fortune-teller; a confused old man locked in a Paris apartment; a financier who goes fishing; a South American heiress ... Maigret must make his way through a frustrating maze of clues, suspects and motives to find out what connects them. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as To Any Lengths and Maigret and the Fortuneteller. 'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian 'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent
With a new introduction by Andrew Roberts. 'A penetrating interpretation...No one with a serious interest in the Napoleonic period can afford to ignore it. ' - Times Literary Supplement Whether viewed as an inspired leader or obsessed tyrant, Napoleon has divided opinion for over 200 years. Few individuals have left such a mark on history. Georges Lefebvre's classic work, published in Routledge Classics in one paperback volume in English for the first time, is a definitive portrait of the Napoleonic era. Lefebvre’s history sweeps us from the lightning coup d’état of 18 Brumaire in 1799 to his final downfall amidst the wheatfields of Waterloo. More than a biography, it is a brilliant survey of the turbulent age Napoleon inaugurated in his attempt to redraw the map of Europe, from the Peninsular War to the invasion of Russia. The cast includes his antagonists – Pitt the Younger, Wellington, Metternich and Tsar Alexander – and his allies – the wily Minister of Police Fouché and Talleyrand, the ‘Prince of Diplomats’. Lefebvre’s account is equally clear-eyed about Napoleon’s genius and his flaws. Napoleon’s determination to emulate Caesar and Augustus condemned Europe to more than a decade of war and economic crisis, but he also built an empire, introducing educational, administrative and financial initiatives that are still in place today. Georges Lefebvre (1877-1959) One of the foremost historians of the Twentieth Century and known as the ‘historian’s historian’, he held the chair of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne . His The French Revolution is also available in Routledge Classics.
“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A gripping mystery from Georges Simenon in which Inspector Maigret must go up against small town suspicion—and revenge In a small, seaside town in the northwest of France, the local wine dealer is wounded by a gunshot while retuning home drunk from a hotel bar. Maigret, who is heading up a mobile squad of the Paris police force, is called in by the mayor to solve the crime. But upon settling down in the hotel, Maigret quickly discovers a curious cast of characters awaits him there—and they all have something to hide. In the course of this strange case, a customs official is shot, a retired journalist is lost and found, and a vagrant is attested, but through it all Maigret has his sights set firmly in the direction of the truth, even as a strange yellow dog haunts the neighborhood. Fast-paced and wholly unpredictable, The Yellow Dog is a sharp mystery set against the cutthroat backdrop of small town politics.
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