The French - Softcover

There are a zillion guides to France jostling for position on travel shelves, but none gives more than a cursory Gallic nod to the people some people love to hate--the French themselves. Theodore Zeldin, an Englishman with great insight into his neighbors across the channel, has written the ultimate guide to the French, including how to laugh at their jokes, when to look solemn, how to appreciate French grandmothers, and how not to be intimidated by their intellectuals. It's a sympathetic, funny, serious, richly readable, charming book that hits the spot and fills a need.

THEODORE ZELDIN is a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. His two-volume history, France 1848-1945 (1973,1977) received international acclaim: The Times called it "brilliant, original, enter- taining and inexhaustible"; Paris Match said that is was "the most perspicacious, the most deeply researched, the liveliest and the most enthralling panorama of French passions." His other books include the novel Happiness (1988). Theodore Zeldin has been awarded the Wolfson Prize and figures on Magazine Litteraire's list of the hundreds most important thinkers in the world today.