Praise for SIXTY MILLION FRENCHMEN CAN’T BE WRONG

“.. should be handed out at Calais and Charles de Gaulle airport to anyone hoping to get a grip on France and make a holiday or life work here.”
-The Daily Telegraph

“… does its job marvelously well. After reading it, you may still think the French are arrogant, aloof and high-handed, but you will know why.”
-The Wall Street Journal

“…simply marvelous… it will definitely help smooth anyone’s introduction to this puzzling and beautiful country.”
-The Globe and Mail

BOOK SUMMARY

From a distance, modern France looks like a riddle. Up close, it all makes sense. SIXTY MILLION FRENCHMEN CAN’T BE WRONG decrypts French ideas about land, food, privacy, language and more. From centralization and the Napoleonic code to elite education and even street protests, Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow weave together the threads of French society to give readers a solid understanding of why the French think, act and organize themselves the way they do.

The authors spent two years journeying through the French psyche, traveling across France from their Paris base through the Loire Valley, the Juras, the Périgord, even the French Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe. They visited the mosques of Paris, followed labor protests in Marseilles, discussed the World War II oppression of Jews and studied France’s extreme right. They talked with the farmers in southern France who destroyed a McDonald’s restaurant in defense of their product, with members of the French administration and with ordinary and extraordinary French men and women. Their goal: to distill what makes the French tick, and explain where their country is headed in the era of globalization and European integration.

Approaching France like a pair of anthropologists, the authors of SIXTY MILLION FRENCHMEN CAN’T BE WRONG use anecdotes and observations, history, political analysis and reflection to probe, explain and illustrate the French national character. The result? A fresh take on a country that no one seems to understand.