France

In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness....

From the bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast comes the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette...

An NPR Best Book of 2017 Heiress to the nearly forty-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the fourteenth wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At ninety-four, she was embroiled in what has...

Here is the captivating history of Paris' world-famous Hôtel Ritz - a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity and of dangerous liaisons, espionage, and resistance....

Paris—city of love, food, culture—is steeped in a rich history known the world over. Historian Cecil Black entertainingly details the stories behind the culture, locations, architecture, people, food and more that keeps visitors enchanted....

When Company A of the US 116th Regiment landed on Omaha Beach in D-Day's first wave on June 6, 1944, it lost 96 percent of its effective strength. Sixteen teams of US engineers arriving in the second wave were unable to blow the beach obstacles....

This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta....

In the tumultuous world of revolutionary France, the enigmatic diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord survived–and shaped–five regimes.

The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) dominated life in England and France for well over a century. It became the defining feature of existence for generations. This sweeping book is the first to tell the human story of the longest military conflict in history....

An authoritative and original history of the Maginot Line that reshapes our understanding of interwar France and the events of 1940.

On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car....

“A dynamic group biography studded with design history and high-society dash . . . [This] elegantly wrought narrative bears the Cartier hallmark.”—The Economist The “astounding” (André Leon Talley) story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their...

"We are all travelers in the 'wilderness of the world' - travelers with a donkey." So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878...

This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness....

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time of personal monarchy, when the close friendship or petty feuding between kings and queens could determine the course of history. The Capetians of France and the Angevins of England waged war, made peace, and intermarried....

According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940....

In six weeks in 1940, France was overrun by German troops and surrendered. One junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England....

Crécy is a story of past and present. It is a new history of one of the most important battles of the Middle Ages: the battle of Crécy, in which the outnumbered English under King Edward III won a decisive victory over the French and changed the course of the Hundred Years War....

The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George...

These are entirely Napoleon Bonaparte's own words, written and spoken, and collected in journal form. A particular focus here has been put on Napoleon's writings that pertain to military and state matters. The dates in terms of the revolutionary calendar have been modernized....

France has influenced the course of history in Europe and the world for centuries....

From the moment Peter Mayle and his wife, Jennie, uprooted their lives in England and crossed the Channel permanently, they never looked back. Here the beloved author of A Year in Provence pays tribute to the most endearing and enduring aspects of his life in France—the charming and indelible...

As an international war correspondent and radio commentator, William L. Shirer didn't just research the fall of France. He was there. In just six weeks, he watched the Third Reich topple one of the world's oldest military powers - and institute a rule of terror and paranoia....

The Reign of Terror continues to fascinate scholars as one of the bloodiest periods in French history, when the Committee of Public Safety strove to defend the first Republic from its many enemies, creating a climate of fear and suspicion in revolutionary France....

In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the listener in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society....

Sous un pont, dans un gouffre, au pied d'un bâtiment, sur un toit, au fronton d'une église, en pleine campagne ou sur la place d'une grande ville, le Diable se cache partout en France ! Aucune région n'est épargnée et le Malin a souvent l'art d'apparaître là où on l'attend le moins. Aussi craint qu'admiré, le Diable habite nos villes et nos campagnes depuis la nuit des temps. Il participe à la légende de nombreux ponts, hante de multiples châteaux, et inquiète les visiteurs de quelques grottes et lacs.

In the tumultuous world of revolutionary France, the enigmatic diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord survived–and shaped–five regimes. Duff Cooper’s elegant biography reveals a man as brilliant as he was controversial; the ‘quick-witted little boy’ who enjoyed the anachronistic world of his great-grandmother’s château became the shrewd, silver-tongued servant of multiple kings and revolutionary leaders. From the salons of pre-revolutionary Paris to the negotiating tables of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, the turncoat Talleyrand exercised his wit, pragmatism and moral ambiguity.

They broke into a bank by crawling through sewage—and emerged as legends. In 1976, under the glamorous streets of Nice, France, a group of thieves pulled off a bank robbery that defied logic and stunned the world. Led by the enigmatic Albert Spaggiari, the gang spent months tunneling through sewers and solid rock to breach the Société Générale vault during a long holiday weekend. Once inside, they worked for nearly three days—stealing millions in cash, gold, and jewels from over 400 deposit boxes. They left without a trace, except a note: “Without weapons, nor hate, nor violence.”

Les dernières découvertes sur la France de Pétain. Plus de quatre-vingts ans après sa disparition, le régime de Vichy continue de hanter notre mémoire collective. En quelques jours, en juillet 1940, la République s'est effondrée. Derrière le maréchal Pétain, héros national devenu chef de l'État français, et le politicien sans scrupules Pierre Laval, des opportunistes jouant la carte allemande et des doctrinaires d'extrême droite prennent le pouvoir.

Французская революция XVIII века стала парадоксом для всего мира. Борьба за права человека и свободу народоизъявления обернулась кровавыми репрессиями и массовыми казнями. Революция уравняла права граждан перед законом — и вместе с тем их шансы оказаться под лезвием гильотины. Был ли террор хаотичным порождением казней Максимилиана Робеспьера или тщательно спланированной революционной политикой?