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.
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.
It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that Byzantine studies acquired their official scientific and academic status, after a long process involving rigorous selection of the documents that have survived to the present day.
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
About Jeanne Guien, Le Désir de nouveautés. L’obsolescence au cœur du capitalisme (XVe-XXIe siècle), La Découverte
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.
The economic crisis that has plagued a great part of the world since 2008 remains baffling as ever, all questions and no answers. Why not start by listing the former, and then imagine what the latter could look like?
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change is three years old this week but is already under attack. In support of further necessary action to address the changing climate, Public Books & La Vie des Idées offer a collaborative series of articles examining the intersection of climate change and capitalism.
A selection of four essays recently published on Books & Ideas offers new perspectives on the definition, historiography and potential applications of environmental theory.
Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.
Richard Hoggart (1918-2014), a poor child who went onto become a university professor, was the epitome of a successful scholarship student. The trajectory of this “exemplary counter-example” sheds light on the mechanisms of social reproduction when they prove inoperative and the distance that can be traveled from one’s native milieu.
According to Nancy Fraser, the renewal of socialism requires a conflation of activism and political theory; indeed, emancipation can only exist on the basis of equal participation in all spheres of life, and can only be understood in terms of social struggles, which today appear in multiple forms.
Le Centre Pompidou a été un modèle pour la politique culturelle française, mais aussi le témoin et victime de ses dérives, de ses impasses, de la réduction des budgets publics à la massification-marchandisation de la culture.
En étudiant l’histoire sociale et politique des transidentités en France, Lou Bossis montre que les identités ne naissent jamais seules : elles se forgent aussi dans les luttes, les solidarités et les espaces collectifs.
Exilée à Avignon, inféodée au roi de France, la papauté semble au début du XIVe siècle abandonner Rome. Dans une Italie désertée par l’autorité de l’Église, refusant les fausses prophéties, Dante s’imagine en nouveau Jérémie.
À propos de : Carolina Spataro, Melina Vázquez, Sin padre, sin marido y sin Estado. Feministas de las nuevas derechas, Siglo XXI Editores
À propos de : Mickaël Löwy et Paul Guillibert, Marx Narodnik. Les populistes russes, le communisme et l’avenir de la révolution, L’Échappée
À propos de : Romain Grancher, Solène Rivoal (dir.), Dernière frontière. Une histoire environnementale du fond de la mer, Champ Vallon
