France in the 1930s

"[Told with] learning and verve. . . . A scintillating introduction to this troubled French decade."-Charles S. Maier, New York Times Book Review

Caught between the memory of a brutal war won at frightful cost and fear of another cataclysm, France in the 1930s suffered a failure of nerve. Brilliantly chronicled here by a master historian, this fateful era could neither solve insoluble problems nor escape from them.

"With the superb mastery of detail that we have come to expect from him, Weber makes the France of the 1920s and 1930s live before our eyes."-Peter Gay, Yale University

"A brilliant survey of the key aspects of French life in the decade before the debacle . . . rendered in lighthearted, witty, but unfailingly perceptive commentary." -Fritz Stern, Foreign Affairs

"A deft and delightful book about a disastrous period of French history. . . . Sharp, witty, and wise commentary on French social and political life in the 1930s. . . . Mr. Weber's swift and shrewd narrative provides us with a brilliant panorama."-Stanley Hoffmann, Wall Street Journal

"[An] arresting and readable portrait of the interwar years."-Boston Sunday Globe

"Couldn't be more timely. . . . Dazzling scholarship."-New York Newsday

Author and narrator of the PBS program "The Western Tradition," Eugen Weber is the Joan Palevsky Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles.