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Title: France On the Brink : A Great Civilization Faces a New Century by Jonathan Fenby ISBN: 1-55970-524-8 Publisher: Arcade Publishing Pub. Date: 14 July, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.53 (15 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Worth reading, but gets tied up in a knot or two
Comment: Fenby clearly loves France (don't we all?) and appreciates the way it combines the wonderful with the maddening, the rational with the irrational, the generous with the selfish. Whether he or the publishers are right to suggest that France is "on the brink" of some serious crisis is, however, another matter. Living in Germany and traveling frequently to France, I get the impression France is increasingly in better shape than its neighbor. Many French have a problem with globalization (Americanization?), but in lots of ways the country is much more modern and sprightly than its European neighbors. So the book rather overstates its central argument. Its strongest points are its detailed accounts of the political, financial and business scandals of the Mitterrand years - quite staggering, when you come to think of them. The book's weakness is that it drifts too much into a blow-by-blow account of recent high politics in Paris, most of which won't be of any lasting concern even to the French themselves. Earlier reviewers who accuse Fenby of having anti-this and anti-that axes to grind are being unfair - overall, he gets the balance right.
Rating: 5
Summary: A perceptive and extraordinary book
Comment: As an American who speaks French and who has friends all around that wonderful country, I found this book to be perceptive and important. While it is true that one can easily catalog problems in any country, I think that the importance of France on the world stage demanded that this book be written.
Critical to Fenby's thinking is his idea that the leadership in France is more and more inbred and separated from the people. The system allows for immense concentrations of power without effective checks and balances. The resulting lack of "tranparence" in fiscal and political matters should really be quite appalling to the French population.
Unlike the previous reviewer, I find a sense of malaise in many of my friends and acquaintances there and a special sense of unhappiness among the unemployed and underemployed, especially among the young.
I do see France as being "on the brink" in the sense that it has fundamental decisions to make about how it will govern itself (increasing accountability versus perpetuation of "une classe politique"), how it will manage its economic system (creation of real jobs versus quaint solutions such as the 35 hour work week), and how it will truly integrate the large number of people who are on the outside looking in.
I would recommend this book to people who are interested in some of the problems and promises of contemporary France.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Bulls-eye
Comment: Fendy says up front that he is not a francophobe...hmmm. Whatever the case, this account is tough to refute. He spends most of his time stressing the dire outlook of France as the country builds another nuclear submarine, while neglecting basic social and economic questions. He also reveals what a crook the average French politician is, the embodiment of which was none other than Mr. Mitterand. Fenby also analyzes the results of the social/economic malaise in France, from the far right's xenophobia, to the widespread America bashing in the Hexagon. He points out that all McDonald's restaurants in France are LOCALLY owned, and that virtally all of the milk, spuds, and beef therein are FRENCH grown. Finally, he stresses that this chain employs 25000 (French) people in France (the French unemployment rate has not gone below 9% in over a decade). José Bové should read this before he sacks his next "McDo's".
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Title: France in the New Century: Portrait of a Changing Society by John Ardagh ISBN: 0140259228 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 02 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Julie Barlow ISBN: 1402200455 Publisher: Sourcebooks Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Contemporary French Cultural Studies by Sian Reynolds, William Kidd ISBN: 0340740507 Publisher: Arnold Publishers Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Au Contraire! Figuring Out The French by Gilles Asselin, Ruth Mastron ISBN: 187786482X Publisher: Intercultural Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Fragile Glory: A Portrait of France and the French by Richard Bernstein ISBN: 0452266785 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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