Antoine Prost

"À travers une série de chroniques originales et passionnantes qui réveillent le passé dans tout ce qu'il a de plus quotidien, Antoine Prost nous dresse un portrait de la société française en 1913 telle qu'on ne l'apprend pas dans les manuels scolaires. Une façon d'entrer dans la grande Histoire par une petite porte. Un livre qui nous en dit long sur cette 'Belle Époque', si lointaine, comme exotique, ce monde d'avant auquel mit fin la Grande Guerre." [Source : 4e de couv.].

For the first time Antoine Proust's seminal articles have been translated into English and collected in this single volume. Beginning with his classic account of war memorials, through to his pioneering study of the Rue de la Goutte d'Or, and finally his work on French Catholic families in the 1930s and 1940s, this book takes the reader through republican representations of war and peace, urban spaces and social identity, and discourse and social conflict in republican France. Among this range of topics, Prost considers the notion of neighborhood and "quartier", the multiple uses of myth, the secularization of religious imagery, the centrality of primary schools in French political culture, and insults as staples of French political rhetoric. Included here are his famous essays "Verdun" and "War Memorials of the Great War," which have been hailed as indispensable additions to the study of European cultural history.