How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People - Softcover

There could be no wiser or more witty guide to the problems of France today. (Julian Jackson Times Literary Supplement)

A first-rate book... Sudhir Hazareesingh, brings an engaging personal angle to his ambitious cavalcade through four centuries of French intellectual thought... This vast, opinionated and wholly original book reminds us that ideas still count and that intellectual endeavour still has resonance in the face of the mercantile plutocracy that so much defines the way we live now. (Douglas Kennedy New Statesman)

This book depicts Parisian society like a Cambridge party in which everyone knows the jokes, and everyone knows where the bodies are buried. You will read it not just with fascination, but with relish. (Jonathan Clark Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year))

Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. Among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, Le Mythe Gaullien and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d'Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, and a Prix d'Histoire du Sénat for the second.