The Discovery of France

click here for more details, find new or used items	Graham Robb Our price £4.99 (£9.99) New from £1.43 Used from £2.72 Pages: 480 (Paperback) ISBN: 033042761X Pub: Picador Pub date: 2008-07-04 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2007

Reader Reviews:

Enlightening new perspective on French history and a delightful read. (0/0 people found this helpful)

A wonderful book, delightfully written and full of historical facts and insights that can only come from an intimate personal knowledge of France and the French, along with penetrating historical research.

France as you never knew it (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is France as you never knew it. It is about how France is and was an area of independent unconnected groups of people on a scale the size of hamlets and even less. It is overflowing with stories and gorgeous little snippets. Indeed like driving through France today you come away form this book with a few strong pictures and a glowing atmosphere of impressions. That France has one language, but it does not, that France has one people, but it does not, and that France is a single country, but it just about is, is the miracle set out before you and described in a soufflé of detail.

Thoroughly recommended (0/0 people found this helpful)

This book's rather dull cover belies the wonders within. It's history not of glittering kings, queens and revolutions in Paris, but of the people, villages and areas of the whole vast country about which little is ever heard - and which explains an awful lot about the gertcha nature of the French.

In what could have been an incomrehensible ramble through the history of various areas of the country, Graham Robb's writing style immediately captures the imagination and leads and links from place to place - although it does need a bit of concentration.

I started reading a borrowed copy; felt immediately that I must have my own copy - and bought another for a francophile friend.

France discovered (1/2 people found this helpful)

This is a very good reference book though perhaps not a cover-to-cover read. It illustrates how the Dukedoms and individual political entities became the united country we see today. To take just one example, it shows the chaotic road systems organised under the separate authorities were only brought to the exemplary standard present today through the influence of Napoleon. For everyone fascinated with the evolution of the totally different culture which still exists just across the La Manche from Britain this is a most informative volume.

By far the best book I've read on the historical & social development of France (0/0 people found this helpful)

Robb's book was given to me by friends when I moved from England to France nearly two years ago. His book turned out to be just what I wanted/needed to enable me to start to understand such a socially varied and historically complex country.

Perhaps, as an part-time social historian and a socialist to boot, I was coming from different places to other, more general, readers? But, the scope (geographically and in time) of Robb's work was just ideal for me ~ I'm reading through it for a second time and taking notes for my own historical research in the Touraine. It will take me a long time to find such an absorbing book on France's history. Or do others out there have more suggestions...?

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