Books & ideas

Arendt in Dark Times

Anne Schwarz — 2026-04-23T07:30:00Z

As 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hannah Arendt's death, a new book offers a fresh perspective on a little-known yet pivotal period in the philosopher's life and work.

Returning to Life

Laura Hobson Faure — 2026-04-21T06:30:00Z

A collective work traces the emotional and psychological journeys of Holocaust survivors in the immediate postwar period. It examines both the practices of caregivers and the strategies survivors employed to reintegrate into society.

Raised Among the Ruins

Charlotte Canizo — 2026-03-05T09:00:00Z

By adopting a child's perspective, Camille Mahé shows that younger children perceived the Second World War differently than adults.

An awareness of danger

Emmanuel Droit — 2025-07-01T21:06:29Z

How did French Jews view Nazism? Beginning in 1933, they organized and prepared for war with a lucid yet often resigned outlook on Hitler's Germany.

Pius XII, the Holy See, and the Jews

Charlotte Canizo — 2025-03-06T09:00:00Z

The Vatican's attitude during the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews has been at the heart of numerous debates and controversies. Nina Valbousquet analyses the ambivalent position of the papacy during the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) and provides a sensitive history of the Holocaust through the archives.

Digging Up Cataclysms

Boris Valentin — 2024-11-14T07:32:01Z

A new archaeology has emerged whose contributions to our understanding of twentieth-century mass violence oscillate between history and memory. A specialist in the field provides an impressive overview that sounds very much like a plea.

Being a Man Under Nazism

Élisa Goudin — 2024-06-04T13:19:00Z

A history of masculinity and a history of men, this collective volume shows that while “ideal” Nazi masculinity was opposed to that of Jews and homosexuals, it was also contested and fragmented, both in the private sphere and on the battlefield.

The Jews and Bulgaria's “rescue” narrative

Mathilde Zederman — 2023-06-13T07:00:00Z

During the Second World War, 48,000 Bulgarian Jews avoided being deported. By analyzing a wide-range of previously unavailable sources, Ragaru shows how a collective narrative was constructed around this fact—one that has been used for political purposes down to the present.

On Earth (Not) As in Heaven

André Loez — 2023-05-16T15:13:46Z

In her study of the fate of the 100,000 or so airmen who fell during the Second World War, Claire Andrieu challenges the separation between civilians and soldiers, regular and irregular combatants, wait-and-see attitudes and active resistance, frontline and rear, through an empirical investigation that is destined to become a landmark work.

The lost worlds of the Cold War

Yohann Morival — 2023-04-11T11:43:40Z

The Cold War is often interpreted as a moment when international cooperation was paralyzed due to the rivalry between the western and eastern blocs. Against this view, Sandrine Kott shows how the Cold War in fact stimulated multilateralism.