Books & ideas

A History of Canicide

Jean-Luc Laffont — 2025-07-08T07:00:00Z

The mass slaughters of dogs carried out in Mexico and Europe in the 19^th century seem to have been a rehearsal for the human holocausts of the 20^th century.

A micro-history of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Thierry Amalou — 2024-03-19T08:00:00Z

Jérémie Foa has written a history of the “other side” of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Nameless people, thrown into the Seine or buried in mass graves, succumbed to the blows of killers as well as to collective forgetting, which the historian seeks to remedy. This is an important book on mass violence.

Life in the Drug Trafficking Era

Romain Busnel — 2024-02-08T07:18:00Z

Between 2006 and 2021, the war on drugs left almost 300,000 dead and 100,000 missing in Mexico. Instead of presenting a romanticized account of drug trafficking and drug barons, Adèle Blazquez analyses the conditions of life in a rural municipality affected by armed violence.

Policing Prostitution

Anaïk Purenne — 2023-09-07T08:31:42Z

In France, the law is rather vague regarding the meaning of prostitution. The job of defining it is often left to the police, but they focus on street prostitution, that of the lower classes, paying barely any attention to the often luxurious type of prostitution used by the upper classes.

The Scourge of Counterfeit Medicines

Étienne Nouguez — 2019-11-28T08:00:00Z

Counterfeit medicines are supposed to number in the hundreds of millions and to wreak havoc on people's lives. How to interpret the fact that NGOs, governments and activist movements oppose the fight against this scourge?

A Moral History of Human Guinea Pigs

Ariel Suhamy — 2011-04-06T07:00:00Z

Is scientific progress necessarily moral? In his history of experiments on human guinea pigs, Grégoire Chamayou attempts to show that modern science, although apparently neutral, has a share in the domination and exploitation of individuals whose existence is deemed insignificant.