"Les Lieux de memoire" is perhaps one of the most profound historical documents on the history and culture of the French nation. Assembled by Pierre Nora during the Mitterand years, this multivolume series has been hailed as "a magnificent achievement" ("The New Republic") and "the grandest, most ambitious effort to dissect, interpret and celebrate the French fascination with their own past" ("The Los Angeles Times"). Written during a time when French national identity was undergoing a pivotal change and the nation was struggling to define itself, this unprecedented series consists of essays by prominent historians and cultural commentators which take, as their points of departure, a "lieu de memoire": a site of memory used to order, concentrate, and secure notions of France's past.
The first volume in the Chicago translation, "Rethinking France, " brings together works addressing the omnipresent role of the state in French life. As in the other volumes, the "lieux de memoire" serve as entries into the French past, whether they are actual sites, political traditions, rituals, or even national pastimes and textbooks. "Volume I: The State" offers a sophisticated and engaging view of the French and their past through widely diverse essays on, for example, the chateau of Versailles and the French history of absolutism; the "Code civil" and its ordering of French life; memoirs written by French statesmen; and Charlemagne and his place in French history. Nora's authors constitute a who's who of French academia, yet they wear their erudition lightly. Taken as a whole, this extraordinary series documents how the French have come to see themselves and why.
Contributors:
Alain Guery
Maurice Agulhon
Bernard Guenee
Daniel Nordman
Robert Morrissey
Alain Boureau
Anne-Marie Lecoq
Helene Himelfarb
Jean Carbonnier
Herve Le Bras
Pierre Nora

As it changed forever the political landscape of the modern world, the French Revolution was driven by a new type of personality: the confirmed, self-aware revolutionary. Maximilien Robespierre originated the role and embodied its ideological essence and extremes; the self that he projected to the people was equated with the ideals for which he strove. In creating this intellectual biography of so enigmatic a figure, David Jordan has stressed the words of the man about himself. With great imagination and insight, Jordan places Robespierre's self-conceptualization within the context of events and explains how Robespierre "The Incorruptible"--a man seen by contemporaries as virtuous--could not only equate justice with vengeance and demand it of the people, but also stand as its symbol before the world.

The fourth and final volume in Pierre Nora's monumental series documenting the history and culture of France takes a self-reflective turn. The eleven essays collected here consider the texts and places that make up the collective memory of the history of France, a country whose people are extraordinarily conscious of history and their place in it. Distinguished contributors look at the medieval Grands chroniques de France and the monasteries and chancelleries that produced them, the establishment of Versailles as a historical museum, and Pierre Larousse's Grand dictionnaire, an important touchstone of cultural memory. Other essays of this title range in topic from the creation of the National Archives, a curiously organized catacomb of manuscripts, to Annales, a publication begun in 1929 that profoundly revitalized the study of history in France. Taken together, these richly detailed essays fully explore the multifaceted ways France has institutionalized its history and are, along with the rest of Les Lieux de memoire, a crucial part of that process.