Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007.
The intensive use of carbon energies has brought prosperity, particularly since 1945, along with relatively peaceful international relations. Decarbonation makes it necessary, according to Pierre Charbonnier, to invent a new form of geopolitics.
Could Argentina, instead of being the modern country we know, have developed into fourteen independent states engaged in never-ending competition? From the “disunited province” of Rio de la Plata to the affirmation of a single nation-state, a new book describes a quest for unity that lasted five decades. Reviewed: Geneviève Verdo, Des peuples en mal d’union. Aux origines de l’Argentine (Peoples without unity: The origins of Argentina) Paris Flammarion, 2025.
Thirty years after La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy (Saint Bartholomew’s Night), Denis Crouzet revisits the massacres of August 1572—a collective purge, a royal enigma, and a popular initiative, which his new book illuminates with bold erudition by reintroducing confessional violence, with all its historical depth, into the story.
About: Anne-Marie Cheny, Le cercle des byzantinistes. Comment bibliothécaires, savants et voyageurs inventèrent Byzance (XVIe-XIXe siècle), Les Belles Lettres
About: Nicolas Badalassi, La France, la guerre froide et la Méditerranée. Des accords d’Évian à la Perestroïka, Presses universitaires de Rennes
About: Paulin Ismard et Arnaud Macé, La Cité et le nombre. Clisthène d’Athènes, l’arithmétique et l’avènement de la démocratie, Les Belles Lettres
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
The American sociologist Harrison White made a vital contribution to the development of social network analysis. Besides his work in this field, his theoretical synthesis and his understanding of social formations have influenced a variety of fields such as the sociology of art and economic sociology.
Recent publications on the Holocaust, as well as the opening of a new archival site for researchers, have enriched the history and historiography of what remains as the most traumatic event of the 20th century. From Saul Friedländer’s cohesive rendition of the genesis and enactment of the final solution (2007), to the opening of the Bad Arolsen archives in Germany in 2008, and the new study of the Warsaw Ghetto archives by Samuel D. Kassow (2007), this dossier presents a selection of five reviews and essays recently published on Books&Ideas, showing that the study of the Holocaust continues to stir up considerable interest in the international research community.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer. In the meantime, here is our weekly selection of reviews published over the past year.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, six contributors from France, Russia and the US address the issue of contemporary Russia and its often tense relations with the West.
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.
Lutter contre la chaleur urbaine ne peut pas passer par une adaptation très superficielle, mais par une transformation de notre manière de construire et d’habiter un monde à la fois fragile et hostile.
Au-delà de la dictature, bien réelle, la RDA n’a pas été une simple parenthèse, un accident de l’histoire. Incarné dans des discours, des organisations, des objets, des partenariats internationaux, le communisme a été autre chose qu’un prélude au post-communisme.
Il est difficile de penser au bien-être des générations qui viendront après nous, et pourtant nous avons à leur égard une responsabilité morale – d’autant plus grande que désormais, leur existence est menacée.
À propos de : Rahel Jaeggi, Progrès et régression, Seuil
À propos de : Leonardo Padura, Aller à La Havane, Métailié
À propos de : Alix Boirot, Où vont les garçons, Enquête sur les masculinités en vacances, Les Léonides
