Our Oldest Enemy

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307419185
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Oldest Enemy by : John J. Miller

Download or read book Our Oldest Enemy written by John J. Miller and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberté? Egalité? Fraternité? Or just plain gall? In this provocative and brilliantly researched history of how the French have dealt with the United States, John J. Miller and Mark Molesky demonstrate that the cherished idea of French friendship has little basis in reality. Despite the myth of the “sister republics,” the French have always been our rivals, and have harmed and obstructed our interests more often than not. This history of French hostility goes back to 1704, when a group of French and Indians massacred American settlers in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The authors also debunk the myth of French aid during the Revolution: contrary to popular notions, the French did not enter the war until very late and were mainly interested in hurting their rivals, the British. After the war, the French continued to see themselves as major players in the Western hemisphere and shaped their policies to limit the growth and power of the new nation. The notorious XYZ affair, involving French efforts to undermine the government of George Washington, led to an undeclared naval war with France in 1798. During the Civil War, the French supported the Confederacy and installed a puppet emperor in Mexico. In the twentieth century, Americans clashed with the French repreatedly. The French victory over President Wilson at Versailles imposed a short-sighted and punitive settlement on Germany that paved the way for the rise of fascism in the 1930s. During World War II, Vichy French troops killed hundreds of American soldiers in North Africa, and diehard French fascist units fought against the Allies in the rubble of Berlin. During the Cold War, Charles DeGaulle yanked France out of NATO and obstructed our efforts to roll back Soviet expansion. The legacy of French imperial power has been no less disastrous. The French left Haiti in a shambles, got us into Vietnam, and educated many of the world’s worst tyrants at their elite universities, including Pol Pot, the genocidal Cambodian dictator. The fascist Baath regimes in Iraq and Syria are another legacy of failed French colonialism. Americans have been particularly irritated by French cultural arrogance—their crusades against American movies, McDonalds, Disney, and the exclusion of American words from their language have always rubbed us the wrong way. This irritation has now blossomed into outrage. Our Oldest Enemy shows why that outrage is justified.

When France Fell

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674258568
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis When France Fell by : Michael S. Neiberg

Download or read book When France Fell written by Michael S. Neiberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shocked by the fall of France in 1940, panicked US leaders rushed to back the Vichy governmentÑa fateful decision that nearly destroyed the AngloÐAmerican alliance. According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the Òmost shocking single eventÓ of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American responseÑa policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain. The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American plannersÕ strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge increases in defense spending, the advent of peacetime military conscription, and domestic spying to weed out potential fifth columnists. Abroad, the United States decided to work with Vichy France despite its pro-Nazi tendencies. The USÐVichy partnership, intended to buy time and temper the flames of war in Europe, severely strained AngloÐAmerican relations. American leaders naively believed that they could woo men like Philippe PŽtain, preventing France from becoming a formal German ally. The British, however, understood that Vichy was subservient to Nazi Germany and instead supported resistance figures such as Charles de Gaulle. After the war, the choice to back Vichy tainted USÐFrench relations for decades. Our collective memory of World War II as a period of American strength overlooks the desperation and faulty decision making that drove US policy from 1940 to 1943. Tracing the key diplomatic and strategic moves of these formative years, When France Fell gives us a more nuanced and complete understanding of the war and of the global position the United States would occupy afterward.

France and the American Civil War

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Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469649950
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis France and the American Civil War by : Stève Sainlaude

Download or read book France and the American Civil War written by Stève Sainlaude and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: France's involvement in the American Civil War was critical to its unfolding, but the details of the European power's role remain little understood. Here, Steve Sainlaude offers the first comprehensive history of French diplomatic engagement with the Union and the Confederate States of America during the conflict. Drawing on archival sources that have been neglected by scholars up to this point, Sainlaude overturns many commonly held assumptions about French relations with the Union and the Confederacy. As Sainlaude demonstrates, no major European power had a deeper stake in the outcome of the conflict than France. Reaching beyond the standard narratives of this history, Sainlaude delves deeply into questions of geopolitical strategy and diplomacy during this critical period in world affairs. The resulting study will help shift the way Americans look at the Civil War and extend their understanding of the conflict in global context.

France, Mexico and Informal Empire in Latin America, 1820-1867

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319704648
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (197 download)

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Book Synopsis France, Mexico and Informal Empire in Latin America, 1820-1867 by : Edward Shawcross

Download or read book France, Mexico and Informal Empire in Latin America, 1820-1867 written by Edward Shawcross and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores French imperialism in Latin America in the nineteenth century, taking Mexico as a case study. The standard narrative of nineteenth-century imperialism in Latin America is one of US expansion and British informal influence. However, it was France, not Britain, which made the most concerted effort to counter US power through Louis-Napoléon’s military intervention in Mexico, begun in 1862, which created an empire on the North American continent under the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. Despite its significance to French and Latin American history, this French imperial project is invariably described as an “illusion”, an “adventure” or a “mirage”. This book challenges these conclusions and places the French intervention in Mexico within the context of informal empire. It analyses French and Mexican ideas about monarchy in Latin America; responses to US expansion and the development of anti-Americanism and pan-Latinism; the consolidation of Mexican conservatism; and, finally, the collaboration of some Mexican elites with French imperialism. An important dimension of the relationship between Mexico and France, explored in the book, is the transatlantic and transnational context in which it developed, where competing conceptions of Mexico and France as nations, the role of Europe and the United States in the Americas and the idea of Latin America itself were challenged and debated.

America's First Ally

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Author :
Publisher : Casemate
ISBN 13 : 1612007023
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis America's First Ally by : Norman Desmarais

Download or read book America's First Ally written by Norman Desmarais and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2019-01-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Revolutionary War historian provides “a comprehensive and accessible guide” to the vital influence France had on America’s path to independence (Publishers Weekly). French support for United States independence was both vital and varied, ranging from ideological inspiration to financial and military support. In this study, historian Norman Desmarais offers an in-depth analysis of this crucial relationship, exploring whether America could have won its independence without its first ally. Demarais begins with the contributions of French Enlightenment thinkers who provided the intellectual frameworks for the American and French revolutions. He then covers the many forms of aid provided by France during the Revolutionary War, including the contributions of individual French officers and troops, as well as covert aid provided before the war began. France also provided naval assistance, particularly to the American privateers who harassed British shipping. Detailed accounts drawn from ships’ logs, court and auction records, newspapers, letters, diaries, journals, and pension applications. In a more sweeping analysis, Desmarais explores the international nature of a war which some consider the first world war. When France and Spain entered the conflict, they fought the Crown forces in their respective areas of economic interest. In addition to the engagements in the Atlantic Ocean, along the American and European coasts and in the West Indies, there are accounts of action in India and the East Indies, South America and Africa.

France in the World

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Author :
Publisher : Other Press, LLC
ISBN 13 : 1590519418
Total Pages : 993 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis France in the World by : Patrick Boucheron

Download or read book France in the World written by Patrick Boucheron and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 993 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dynamic collection presents a new way of writing national and global histories while developing our understanding of France in the world through short, provocative essays that range from prehistoric frescoes to Coco Chanel to the terrorist attacks of 2015. Bringing together an impressive group of established and up-and-coming historians, this bestselling history conceives of France not as a fixed, rooted entity, but instead as a place and an idea in flux, moving beyond all borders and frontiers, shaped by exchanges and mixtures. Presented in chronological order from 34,000 BC to 2015, each chapter covers a significant year from its own particular angle--the marriage of a Viking leader to a Carolingian princess proposed by Charles the Fat in 882, the Persian embassy's reception at the court of Louis XIV in 1715, the Chilean coup d'état against President Salvador Allende in 1973 that mobilized a generation of French left-wing activists. France in the World combines the intellectual rigor of an academic work with the liveliness and readability of popular history. With a brand-new preface aimed at an international audience, this English-language edition will be an essential resource for Francophiles and scholars alike.

Citizenship and Belonging in France and North America

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030301583
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis Citizenship and Belonging in France and North America by : Ramona Mielusel

Download or read book Citizenship and Belonging in France and North America written by Ramona Mielusel and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first decades of the new millennium have been marked by major political changes. Although The West has wished to revisit internal and international politics concerning migration policies, refugee status, integration, secularism, and the dismantling of communitarianism, events like the Syrian refugee crisis, the terrorist attacks in France in 2015-2016, and the economic crisis of 2008 have resurrected concepts such as national identity, integration, citizenship and re-shaping state policies in many developed countries. In France and Canada, more recent public elections have brought complex democratic political figures like Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau to the public eye. Both leaders were elected based on their promising political agendas that aimed at bringing their countries into the new millennium; Trudeau promotes multiculturalism, while Macron touts the diverse nation and the inclusion of diverse ethnic communities to the national model. This edited collection aims to establish a dialogue between these two countries and across disciplines in search of such discursive illustrations and opposing discourses. Analyzing the cultural and political tensions between minority groups and the state in light of political events that question ideas of citizenship and belonging to a multicultural nation, the chapters in this volume serve as a testimonial to the multiple views on the political and public perception of multicultural practices and their national and international applicability to our current geopolitical context.

America

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Publisher : Grove Press
ISBN 13 : 0802149359
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (21 download)

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Book Synopsis America by : François Busnel

Download or read book America written by François Busnel and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s leading French writers offer their perspective of a post-2016 America in this collection of pieces from the bestselling French literary magazine. From Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America to the moveable feasts of the Lost Generation, France and the United States have long shared a special relationship, defined as much by romantic fascination as occasional incomprehension. François Busnel, host of the acclaimed literary talk show La Grande Librairie, seeks to bridge this gap with America, a journal of literature and politics conceived in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, now available to English readers for the first time. In this insightful collection of pieces from the magazine, Alain Mabanckou sketches the outlines of his Los Angeles, where he finds a sense of belonging far from his home country of the Republic of the Congo. Leïla Slimani considers the ways #MeToo is shaping a new discourse around consent on college campuses, and Philippe Besson takes an old-fashioned road trip through the American heartland as he drives from Chicago to New Orleans. Joël Dicker traipses through Yellowstone National Park on the lookout for grizzlies, while Alice Zeniter wanders the scorching streets of Las Vegas on foot. Featuring a poignant interview with National Book Award winner Louise Erdrich and original work in English by luminaries including Richard Powers, Colum McCann, and Laura Kasischke, America suggests a new way of understanding the enduring relationship between France and the United States, one that has never been read in quite this way before. From the streets of Manhattan to the Wyoming wilderness, across rural Pennsylvania’s Amish country to the bright lights of Hollywood, America takes us on a crisscrossing road trip across the country as it archives accounts of the administration of the past four years and offers a moving testament to the essential power of literature to unite in times of division. Praise for America “Busnel presents a fine anthology of essays originally published in the French quarterly America. . . . The writers’ varied approaches mean that, even for readers familiar with the issues at play, the pieces will be consistently entertaining. As such, an American audience should lap up this thought-provoking tour.” —Publishers Weekly “A form of sophisticated literary activism.” —Literary Hub “While we wait for the “great works” inspired by the Trump era, the novelists and reporters at America will continue to discover the country that elected him, painting a picture while leaving prejudice to one side.” —France-Amérique “A kaleidoscopic reading list of a divided nation.” —Columbia Journalism Review

Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States, 1796

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 38 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States, 1796 by : George Washington

Download or read book Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States, 1796 written by George Washington and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

America Through European Eyes

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Author :
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271033908
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis America Through European Eyes by : Aurelian Cr_iu_u

Download or read book America Through European Eyes written by Aurelian Cr_iu_u and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A collection of essays that discuss representative eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and English views of American democracy and society, and offer a critical assessment of various narrative constructions of American life, society, and culture"--Provided by publisher.

Confronting America

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807877743
Total Pages : 549 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Confronting America by : Alessandro Brogi

Download or read book Confronting America written by Alessandro Brogi and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Cold War, the United States encountered unexpected challenges from Italy and France, two countries with the strongest, and determinedly most anti-American, Communist Parties in Western Europe. Based primarily on new evidence from communist archives in France and Italy, as well as research archives in the United States, Alessandro Brogi's original study reveals how the United States was forced by political opposition within these two core Western countries to reassess its own anticommunist strategies, its image, and the general meaning of American liberal capitalist culture and ideology. Brogi shows that the resistance to Americanization was a critical test for the French and Italian communists' own legitimacy and existence. Their anti-Americanism was mostly dogmatic and driven by the Soviet Union, but it was also, at crucial times, subtle and ambivalent, nurturing fascination with the American culture of dissent. The staunchly anticommunist United States, Brogi argues, found a successful balance to fighting the communist threat in France and Italy by employing diplomacy and fostering instances of mild dissent in both countries. Ultimately, both the French and Italian communists failed to adapt to the forces of modernization that stemmed both from indigenous factors and from American influence. Confronting America illuminates the political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural conflicts behind the U.S.-communist confrontation.

What Soldiers Do

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226923096
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (269 download)

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Book Synopsis What Soldiers Do by : Mary Louise Roberts

Download or read book What Soldiers Do written by Mary Louise Roberts and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-05-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.

A Great Improvisation

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Author :
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1429907991
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis A Great Improvisation by : Stacy Schiff

Download or read book A Great Improvisation written by Stacy Schiff and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2006-01-10 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon to be a streaming series ● In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his career In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin--seventy 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 well 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; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man. In A Great Improvisation, Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerge a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.

JFK and de Gaulle

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Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813177766
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis JFK and de Gaulle by : Sean J. McLaughlin

Download or read book JFK and de Gaulle written by Sean J. McLaughlin and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite French President Charles de Gaulle's persistent efforts to constructively share French experience and use his resources to help engineer an American exit from Vietnam, the Kennedy administration responded to de Gaulle's peace initiatives with bitter silence and inaction. The administration's response ignited a series of events that dealt a massive blow to American prestige across the globe, resulting in the deaths of over fifty-eight thousand American soldiers and turning hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens into refugees. This history of Franco-American relations during the Kennedy presidency explores how and why France and the US disagreed over the proper western strategy for the Vietnam War. France clearly had more direct political experience in Vietnam, but France's postwar decolonization cemented Kennedy's perception that the French were characterized by a toxic mixture of short-sightedness, stubbornness, and indifference to the collective interests of the West. At no point did the Kennedy administration give serious consideration to de Gaulle's proposals or entertain the notion of using his services as an honest broker in order to disengage from a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control. Kennedy's Francophobia, the roots of which appear in a selection of private writings from Kennedy's undergraduate years at Harvard, biased his decision-making. The course of action Kennedy chose in 1963, a rejection of the French peace program, all but handcuffed Lyndon Johnson into formally entering a war he knew the United States had little chance of winning.

Cultural Misunderstandings

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022611189X
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Misunderstandings by : Raymonde Carroll

Download or read book Cultural Misunderstandings written by Raymonde Carroll and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Full of colorful anecdotes…tells us a lot about the French but even more about ourselves.”—Los Angeles Times This is an intriguing and thoughtful analysis of the many ways French and Americans—and indeed any members of different cultures—can misinterpret each other, even when ostensibly speaking the same language. Cultural misunderstandings, Raymonde Carroll points out, can arise even where we least expect them: in our closest relationships. With revealing vignettes and perceptive observations, she brings to light some fundamental differences in French and American presuppositions about love, friendship, and raising children, as well as such everyday activities as using the telephone or asking for information. “An entertaining, informative book…often witty…a vital source for learning how to establish amity not only between the U.S. and France but among all the world’s nations.”—Publishers Weekly

The Forts of New France in Northeast America 1600–1763

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472803183
Total Pages : 155 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (728 download)

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Book Synopsis The Forts of New France in Northeast America 1600–1763 by : René Chartrand

Download or read book The Forts of New France in Northeast America 1600–1763 written by René Chartrand and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-20 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'New France' consisted of the area colonized and ruled by France in North America. This title takes a look at the lengthy chain of forts built by the French to guard the frontier in the American northeast, including Sorel, Chambly, St Jean, Carillon (Ticonderoga), Duquesne (Pittsburgh, PA), and Vincennes. These forts were of two types: the major stone forts, and other forts made of wood and earth, all of which varied widely in style from Vauban-type elements to cabins surrounded by a stockade. Some forts, such as Chambly, looked more like medieval castles in their earliest incarnations. René Chartrand examines the different types of forts built by the French, describing the strategic vision that led to their construction, their impact upon the British colonies and the Indian nations of the interior, and the French military technology that went into their construction.

Sister Revolutions

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Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1429923695
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Sister Revolutions by : Susan Dunn

Download or read book Sister Revolutions written by Susan Dunn and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2000-09-04 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What the two great modern revolutions can teach us about democracy today. In 1790, the American diplomat and politician Gouverneur Morris compared the French and American Revolutions, saying that the French "have taken Genius instead of Reason for their guide, adopted Experiment instead of Experience, and wander in the Dark because they prefer Lightning to Light." Although both revolutions professed similar Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality, and justice, there were dramatic differences. The Americans were content to preserve many aspects of their English heritage; the French sought a complete break with a thousand years of history. The Americans accepted nonviolent political conflict; the French valued unity above all. The Americans emphasized individual rights, while the French stressed public order and cohesion. Why did the two revolutions follow such different trajectories? What influence have the two different visions of democracy had on modern history? And what lessons do they offer us about democracy today? In a lucid narrative style, with particular emphasis on lively portraits of the major actors, Susan Dunn traces the legacies of the two great revolutions through modern history and up to the revolutionary movements of our own time. Her combination of history and political analysis will appeal to all who take an interest in the way democratic nations are governed.