false 1459 0 0 2174 0316118788 9780316118781 6 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1160691448m/2174.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1160691448s/2174.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2174.Flaubert_A_Biography 3.45 11 1459 3.61 18 8 2006 2392143 0884118916 9780884118916 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2392143.Rogue_in_Space 3.50 4 1459 3.61 18 8 1976 1363730 0876541139 9780876541135 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1363730.Stagger_Lee 4.00 2 1459 3.61 18 8 0 833235 0374297428 9780374297428 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178755661m/833235.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178755661s/833235.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/833235.Zola_A_Life 5.00 1 1459 3.61 18 8 1995 7058535 0307266311 9780307266316 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7058535-for-the-soul-of-france 0.0 0 The New Yorker) and Flaubert (“Splendid . . . Intellectually nuanced, exquisitely written”—The New Republic) now gives us an ambitious, far-reaching book—a perfect joining of subject and writer: a portrait of fin-de-siècle France.

He writes about the forces that led up to the twilight years of the nineteenth century when France, defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, was forced to cede the border states of Alsace and Lorraine, and of the resulting civil war, waged without restraint, that toppled Napoléon III, crushed the Paris Commune, and provoked a dangerous nationalism that gripped the Republic.

The author describes how postwar France, a nation splintered in the face of humiliation by the foreigner—Prussia—dissolved into two cultural factions: moderates, proponents of a secular state (“Clericalism, there is the enemy!”), and reactionaries, who saw their ideal nation—militant, Catholic, royalist—embodied by Joan of Arc, with their message, that France had suffered its defeat in 1871 for having betrayed its true faith. A bitter debate took hold of the heart and soul of the country, framed by the vision of “science” and “technological advancement” versus “supernatural intervention.”

Brown shows us how Paris’s most iconic monuments that rose up during those years bear witness to the passionate decades-long quarrel. At one end of Paris was Gustave Eiffel’s tower, built in iron and more than a thousand feet tall, the beacon of a forward-looking nation; at Paris’ other end, at the highest point in the city, the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, atonement for the country’s sins and moral laxity whose punishment was France’s defeat in the war . . .

Brown makes clear that the Dreyfus Affair—the cannonade of the 1890s—can only be understood in light of these converging forces. “The Affair” shaped the character of public debate and informed private life. At stake was the fate of a Republic born during the Franco-Prussian War and reared against bitter opposition.

The losses that abounded during this time—the financial loss suffered by thousands in the crash of the Union Génerale, a bank founded in 1875 to promote Catholic interests with Catholic capital outside the Rothschilds’ sphere of influence, along with the failure of the Panama Canal Company—spurred the partisan press, which blamed both disasters on Jewry.

The author writes how the roiling conflicts that began thirty years before Dreyfus did not end with his exoneration in 1900. Instead they became the festering point that led to France’s surrender to Hitler’s armies in 1940, when the Third Republic fell and the Vichy government replaced it, with Marshal Pétain heralded as the latest incarnation of Joan of Arc, France’s savior . . .]]> 1459 3.61 18 8 2010 6989945 0641869878 9780641869877 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6989945-flaubert 0.0 0 1459 3.61 18 8 2006 4659701 0670698024 9780670698028 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4659701.Theater_and_Revolution 0.0 0 1459 3.61 18 8 1980 4630341 0582112273 9780582112278 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4630341.An_impersonation_of_angels_A_biography_of_Jean_Cocteau 0.0 0 1459 3.61 18 8 1969 4332316 0670548049 9780670548040 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4332316.Pere_Lachaise 0.0 0 1459 3.61 18 8 1973 3791347 040502004X 9780405020049 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3791347.From_Tienstin_to_Peking_With_the_Allied_Forces 0.0 0 1459 3.61 18 8 1970