Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong : Why We Love France but Not the French

Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Julie Barlow

Find this book at buch7.de | eurobuch.com | buchhandel.de | books.google.com ASIN=1402200455, Category: Political Philosophy, Language: E, cover: PB, pages: 351, year: 2003.

Book Description
At last, a fresh take on a country that no one can seem to understand.

The French smoke, drink and eat more fat than anyone in the world, yet they live longer and have fewer heart problems than Americans. They take seven weeks of paid vacation per year, yet have the world's highest productivity index. From a distance, modern France looks like a riddle. But up close, it all makes sense. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong shows how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Decrypting French ideas about land, food, privacy and language, the authors weave together the threads of French society - from centralization and the Napoleonic code to elite education and even street protests - giving us, for the first time, an understanding of France and the French.

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong is the most ambitious work published on France since Theodor Zeldin's The French. It goes beyond Adam Gopnik'sParis to the Moon to explain not only the essence of the French, but also how they got to be the way they are. Unlike Jonathan Fenby's France on the Brink, the authors do not see France in a state of decline, but one of perpetual renewal.

Note © (2005) by IBS

I've read in the reviews of this book the author of the above book doesn't know the French good enough and that "A Year in Merde" and subsequent writings by Stephen Clarke would be a better read - and it might be much more fun too.