This unique guide to the French Fourth and Fifth Republics is a comprehensive reference work that includes over 250 entries on a variety of topics--ranging from politics and economics to foreign and defense policy to social and cultural history. It is an interdisciplinary work that will serve as a handy reference tool for those seeking information on contemporary France. The contributors represent a number of fields, including history, political science, literature, and language. Entries are on both specific events or people and broad thematic topics, such as political, economic, social, and intellectual trends, which help to provide an overview of France since World War II and to place individual entries in a specific context. The volume also includes a short chronology and appendixes classifying entries by categories and listing presidents and prime ministers of the Fourth and Fifth Republics. Each entry concludes with a short bibliography of additional sources.

Enables the non-specialist reader to understand how perceptions of France have been established abroad, and reminds the specialist reader of the forces that shaped modern France.

A region-by-region guide that provides detailed information on "regional geography, history, recent politics, population, economy, culture (including cuisine [and recipes]), and architecture and noteworthy sites."--p. [ix].

Fully annotated and completely updated—the most comprehensive guide to reference books in the field of history. Reference Sources in History catalogs atlases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, sourcebooks, bibliographies, and chronologies and makes sense of it all. Its broad scope and systematic organization make it an accessible, reliable resource for experienced and inexperienced researchers alike. Fully annotated and updated, the new edition summarizes hundreds of reference works on every conceivable subject in history—from ancient to modern, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. This edition also reflects the dramatic impact of the digital revolution on historical research by integrating a wide range of Internet and CD-ROM sources. Reference Sources in History is a time-saving alternative to searching the reference stacks or getting lost in an online thicket of dubious historical websites.

Few nations have such a long and rich history as France. This indispensible volume covers political, economic, and cultural milestones throughout its long and fascinating history. From Gothic cathedrals to rap and hip-hop, France is at the intersection of the worlds of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, and it continues to renew the democratic model of politics. Having weathered the storms of the first half of the 20th century, France has helped to curb the recent global march of right-wing nationalism, while economically France ranks among the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, and Great Britain as one of the most powerful economies in the world. The History of France is up-to-date and concise yet comprehensive, offering a readers a current, narrative history of France. Engagingly written for students and general readers alike, it brings to life the compelling history of this fractious and fascinating country. Chronological chapters examine the history of France through the first year and a half of Emmanuel Macron's presidency. A timeline and appendix of Significant Individuals round out the work.

People may choose to ignore their animal heritage by interpreting their behavior as divinely inspired, socially purposeful, or even self-serving, all of which they attribute to being human, but they masticate, fornicate, and procreate, much as chimps and apes do, so they should have little cause to get upset if they learn that they act like other primates when they politically agitate, debate, abdicate, placate, and administrate, too." -- from the book King of the Mountain presents the startling findings of Arnold M. Ludwig's eighteen-year investigation into why people want to rule. The answer may seem obvious -- power, privilege, and perks -- but any adequate answer also needs to explain why so many rulers cling to power even when they are miserable, trust nobody, feel besieged, and face almost certain death. Ludwig's results suggest that leaders of nations tend to act remarkably like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern, and rule. Profiling every ruler of a recognized country in the twentieth century -- over 1,900 people in all­­, Ludwig establishes how rulers came to power, how they lost power, the dangers they faced, and the odds of their being assassinated, committing suicide, or dying a natural death. Then, concentrating on a smaller sub-set of 377 rulers for whom more extensive personal information was available, he compares six different kinds of leaders, examining their characteristics, their childhoods, and their mental stability or instability to identify the main predictors of later political success. Ludwig's penetrating observations, though presented in a lighthearted and entertaining way, offer important insight into why humans have engaged in war throughout recorded history as well as suggesting how they might live together in peace.

French Urban Planning 1940-1968 explores the creation and progressive dismantling of France's centralized, authoritarian system of urban and architectural planning. Established in the wake of World War II to facilitate the reconstruction and expansion of cities, this planning program led to the evolution of large suburban housing estates plagued by inter/intra family conflict, juvenile delinquency, and other social difficulties, which sociologists connected to poor planning and design. Critics began calling for the democratization of planning to remedy design problems, and the government of Charles de Gaulle started reforming planning procedures in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This book moves beyond technical and political issues to explore forces of religion, gender, and class that affected planning practices. Key critics and state officials emerged from the Catholic Left. Some were women from working-class backgrounds, and they manipulated gender stereotypes to insert working- and middle-class women into the design process. Sometimes in opposition, but often together, these reformers initiated the most significant change of architectural and urban planning until the introduction of François Mitterrand's decentralization reforms in the 1980s. French Urban Planning 1940-1968 will appeal to scholars and students interested in architectural, urban, and social trends in twentieth-century France.