Fran?ois Cusset, author of the acclaimed book "French Theory," investigates the queering of the French literary canon by American writers and scholars in this thought-provoking and free-minded journey across six centuries of literary classics and sexual polemics.

Cusset presents the foundations and rationale for American queer theory, the field of study established in the 1990s and promulgated by writers and scholars such as Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Michael Warner, which challenges a supposed "heteronormative" ideology in our culture. He then provides an overview of their reinterpretation of the French literary canon from a queer perspective, then deliberately goes further, confronting that same canon with a lively form of general suspicion― seeking gender trouble and sexual ambiguities in the most unexpected corners of French literary classics, in which macho heroes turn out to be homosocial melancholics, and the most seemingly submissive housewives, great vanguards of lesbian liberation.

Cusset's survey includes medieval and Renaissance literature, works from the Age of Enlightenment, nineteenth-century avant-gardists such as Charles Baudelaire and Honore de Balzac, and twentieth-century modernists such as Marcel Proust and Jean Genet.

Bold in its themes and propositions, "The Inverted Gaze" (a translation of the book "Queer Critics") is an extraordinary work about French literature and American queer politics by one of France's most prominent intellectuals.

An English to French Technical Dictionary for use in the fields of: Electricity, Mechanics, Mining, Metallurgy, and the Sciences. Seventh Edition Revised and Enlarged.

An examination of the reactionary, individualist, cynical, and belligerent shift in global politics to the right, implemented both by the right and the establishment left. Systemic, euphemized, insidious and structural violence has increased. It is now objectively measurable by the gulf in revenues, by subjective malaise, or by the menace of ecological apocalypse, and also by their constant exacerbation. -from How the World Swung to the Right Despite a few zones of active resistance-the alter-globalization movement, the Chiapas uprisings, the Arab springs, and the recent resistance to racialized police brutality and environmental and genocidal warfare in the United States-the last half-century has been witness to an undeniable global shift to the right. How the World Swung to the Right provides a comprehensive overview of this reactionary, individualist, cynical, and belligerent shift, which often has been cloaked in the guise of entertainment and good intentions. The counterrevolutions began with a first phase of deregulation and ideological counter-attacks, and the fall of the so-called "real" communisms. The 1990s inaugurated a global biopolitical turn and the financialization of the economy; the 2000s hammered in neoliberal gains through the alliance of ultraliberalism with neoconservatism. These policies were implemented, surprisingly, not only by the right but often by the establishment left. Cusset argues that in the face of this betrayal, conflict is the one thing we can still salvage from the notion of the "left." What we need today, he contends, are new sites of conflict that multiply the causes of struggle and the sites of mobilization, linking socioeconomic struggle with questions of identity and the urgency of ecology.

"Catherine Cusset's book caught a lot of me. I recognised myself" DAVID HOCKNEY "A perfect short expose of Hockney's life as seen through the eyes of an admiring novelist" Kirkus Reviews "Hers is an affirming vision of a restless talent propelled by optimism and chance" New York Times With clear, vivid prose, this meticulously researched novel draws an intimate, moving portrait of the most famous living English painter. Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney had to fight to become an artist. After leaving home for the Royal College of Art in London his career flourished, but he continued to struggle with a sense of not belonging, because of his homosexuality, which had yet to be decriminalised, and because of his inclination for a figurative style of art, which was not sufficiently "contemporary" to be valued. Trips to New York and California - where he would live for many years and paint his iconic swimming pools - introduced him to new scenes and new loves, beginning a journey that would take him through the fraught years of the AIDS epidemic. A compelling hybrid of novel and biography, David Hockney: A Life offers an insightful overview of a painter whose art is as accessible as it is compelling, and whose passion to create has never been deterred by heartbreak or illness or loss. Translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan

Since the Doi Moi policy of economic renovation was introduced in 1986, Vietnam has undergone deep transformations as a result of the transition to a socialist-oriented market economy. Social and urban transition has taken place in parallel, as urban dynamics were spurred on by Vietnamese public and private stakeholders, and by external agents such as international organizations and international solidarity organizations, experts, consultants and bilateral aid organizations. Here are the results of research carried out by French, Canadian and Vietnamese teams from the north and south of the country on the overarching theme of Vietnamese cities in transition. Some of this research deals with urban dynamics, some with the issues at stake within such dynamics, or with the strategies of the most significant stakeholders in urban transition: civil society, donors within the framework of official aid for development, consultants and international consultancy firms. These projects were carried out between 2001 and 2004 as part of the Urban Research Programme for Development (PRUD), and mainly focus on Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, or both in the case of comparative studies. Is there such a thing as a Vietnamese model of an Asian city? It seems that urban transition in Vietnam is not taking place in as radical and abrupt a manner as in China. The country's capacity for absorbing external models, the quest for a third way between state intervention and economic liberalism, and the fact that the country's architectural heritage is taken into account in urban planning, are just some of the reasons for its particularity. The issues addressed in each chapter, as well as the proposals for further research suggested by the contributors, should act as a catalyst for urban research in Vietnam.

WHAT IF SOMEONE WROTE A STORY ALL ABOUT YOU...A STORY THAT DETAILED YOUR LOVE LIFE, YOUR RELATIONSHIPS, YOUR DAILY COMINGS AND GOINGS? AND WHAT IF YOUR ANONYMOUS AUTHOR GOT IT ALL RIGHT?

Meet Jane. A professor at an academically outstanding college, she is recently divorced and feeling somewhat unsure, especially in terms of the opposite sex, having had several recent attempts to befriend men go awry.

As she leaves her apartment one day, she discovers a package addressed to her in the foyer of her building. Opening it, she discovers that it's a novel -- entitled "The Story of Jane." As she starts to read, she realizes that the novel is all about her -- her and her love life, or failure at love, to be more exact.

There's no name on the manuscript, no return address on the package. Suddenly uneasy and feeling much too exposed, she retreats to her apartment and sets about reading. At various points during the afternoon she stops to wonder -- sometimes in amazement, often in anger -- who could have known her well enough to write this story of her life. And where could that person be now?

As we peer over Jane's shoulder, reading along with her, we learn all about her life since arriving at Devayne University. We see her affairs, her marriage to the very sexy Eric, which ends in divorce, her disastrous friendship with the already married Francisco. One by one, Jane considers the men she has known, sure that one of them is the obsessed author and more than a little afraid that she might be in danger.

A startlingly fresh and innovative novel, "The Story of Jane" takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and revelations as the layers of Jane's life are peeled away and theanonymous author becomes known.

Winner of the 1996 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize, Catherine Cusset's No Tomorrow traces the moral meaning of pleasure in several libertine works of the eighteenth-century--Watteau's Pelerinage a l'ile de Cythere, Prevost's Manon Lescaut, Crebillon's Les egarements du coeur et de l'esprit, the anonymous pornographic novel Therese philosophe, Diderot's La religieuse, and Vivant Denon's short story "Point de lendemain."

In this ambitious book, Cusset reframes the often misunderstood genre that celebrates what Casanova calls "the present enjoyment of the senses." She contends libertine works are not, as is commonly thought, characterized by the preaching of sexual pleasure but are instead linked by an "ethics of pleasure" that teaches readers that vanity and sensual enjoyment are part of their moral being. Developing Roland Barthes's concept of "the pleasure of the text," the author argues that the novel is a powerful vehicle for moral lessons, more so than philosophical or moral treatises, because it conveys such lessons through pleasure.

Cusset reads the proliferation of libertine novels as a reaction against the denial of pleasure in the literature and culture of the time. In the midst of the century's metaphysical impulse to simplify human psychology, these works focus on the moments in which human contradictions are revealed.

Cusset's analysis suggests that libertine novels offered the eighteenth century a more complex picture of moral being and ultimately contributed a lesson of tolerance to the Enlightenment.

Winner of the 1996 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize, Catherine Cusset's No Tomorrow traces the moral meaning of pleasure in several libertine works of the eighteenth-century-Watteau's Pelerinage a l'ile de Cythere, Prevost's Manon Lescaut, Crebillon's Les egarements du coeur et de l'esprit, the anonymous pornographic novel Therese philosophe, Diderot's La religieuse, and Vivant Denon's short story ""Point de lendemain."" In this ambitious book, Cusset reframes the often misunderstood genre that celebrates what Casanova calls ""the present enjoyment of the senses."" She contends libertine works are not, as is commonly thought, characterized by the preaching of sexual pleasure but are instead linked by an ""ethics of pleasure"" that teaches readers that vanity and sensual enjoyment are part of their moral being. Developing Roland Barthes's concept of ""the pleasure of the text,"" the author argues that the novel is a powerful vehicle for moral lessons, more so than philosophical or moral treatises, because it conveys such lessons through pleasure. Cusset reads the proliferation of libertine novels as a reaction against the denial of pleasure in the literature and culture of the time. In the midst of the century's metaphysical impulse to simplify human psychology, these works focus on the moments in which human contradictions are revealed. Cusset's analysis suggests that libertine novels offered the eighteenth century a more complex picture of moral being and ultimately contributed a lesson of tolerance to the Enlightenment.

"A great story, full of twists and turns. . . . Careers made and ruined, departments torn apart, writing programs turned into sensitivity seminars, political witch hunts, public opprobrium, ignorant media attacks, the whole ball of wax. Read it and laugh or read it and weep. I can hardly wait for the movie." --Stanley Fish, "Think Again, New York Times" "In such a difficult genre, full of traps and obstacles, French Theory" is a success and a remarkable book in every respect: it is fair, balanced, and informed. I am sure this book will become the" reference on both sides of the Atlantic." --Jacques Derrida "The Atlantic Ocean has two sides, and so does French Theory. Reinvented in America and betrayed in its own country, it has become the most radical intellectual movement in the West with global reach, rewriting Marx in light of late capitalism. Breathtakingly moving back and forth between the two cultures, Francois Cusset takes us through a dazzling intellectual adventure that illuminates the past thirty years, and many more decades to come." --Sylvere Lotringer During the last three decades of the twentieth century, a disparate group of radical French thinkers achieved an improbable level of influence and fame in the United States. Compared by at least one journalist to the British rock 'n' roll invasion, the arrival of works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari on American shores in the late 1970s and 1980s caused a sensation. Outside the academy, "French theory" had a profound impact on the era's emerging identity politics while also becoming, in the 1980s, the target of right-wing propagandists. At thesame time in academic departments across the country, their poststructuralist form of radical suspicion transformed disciplines from literature to anthropology to architecture. By the 1990s, French theory was woven deeply into America's cultural and intellectual fabric. French Theory "is the first comprehensive account of the American fortunes of these unlikely philosophical celebrities. Francois Cusset looks at why America proved to be such fertile ground for French theory, how such demanding writings could become so widely influential, and the peculiarly American readings of these works. Reveling in the gossipy history, Cusset also provides a lively exploration of the many provocative critical practices inspired by French theory. Ultimately, he dares to shine a bright light on the exultation of these thinkers to assess the relevance of critical theory to social and political activism today-showing, finally, how French theory has become inextricably bound with American life. Francois Cusset, a writer and intellectual historian, teaches contemporary French thought in Paris at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques and at Columbia University's Reid Hall. His books include Queer Critics" and La Decennie." Jeff Fort is assistant professor of French at the University of California, Davis. He has translated works by Maurice Blanchot, Jean Genet, and Jean-Luc Nancy.