A serviceable biography of French historian Marc Bloch, whose
career started literally days before WW I and ended with a hero's
death in 1944 while serving in the French Resistance during WW II.
Although highly regarded as a scholar (primarily for The Royal
Touch, French Rural History, and Feudal Society), Bloch was no
ivory-tower specialist. He came of age as the last ripples of the
Dreyfus Affair swept over France and personally experienced and
fought the revival of anti-Semitism between the wars. As an
intelligence officer during WW I, he had a firsthand view of
combat. Strange Defeat, his account of the happenings of 1918-40
that led to the defeat of France in 1940, is still considered one
of the definitive accounts of that period, even though Capt. Bloch
had at best a worm's-eye view of WW II as "Fuel King" (gasoline
supply officer) of France's last Army. Fink (History/Univ, of North
Carolina at Wilmington) makes much of Bloch's contributions to the
reform of historical study and research in particular and French
education in general, but most readers will find the more dramatic,
more personal details here of greater interest. (Kirkus Reviews)
This is the first biography of Marc Bloch (1886-1944), historian,
soldier in both world wars, and leader of the Resistance, who was
captured, tortured, and died a heroic death. Based largely on
Bloch's private letters, diaries and papers, as well as on other
unpublished documents, it traces the remarkable life of this
French-Jewish patriot under the Third Republic. As an historian,
Bloch is perhaps best known for The Historian's Craft, an inspiring
set of meditations on his life's work, and as co-founder of the now
legendary journal Annales, which gave rise to a major school of
historical writing. Profoundly influenced by the dark events that
shaped his era - world wars, anti-semitism, and totalitarianism -
Bloch has become something of an intellectual hero of our century,
his life an epitome of the endeavour to uphold, in the face of such
events, the spirit of unfettered critical enquiry.
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