Product details
- ISBN 9780275948870
- Publication Date: 19 May 1995
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This book traces the prepresidential career of the Socialist French president, covering his early years, his participation in the Vichy government, the Resistance and the governments of the Fourth Republic, and his 23 year march to the pinnacle of national power as leader of the French opposition during the first decades of the Fifth Republic. It is the story of a politician who built a solid majority starting from scratch in adopted political territory, a chaotic world of utopists, anarchists, purists, ideologues, and disciplined militants—in short, the French left. Baumann-Reynolds discusses the whats—Mitterrand's socialism, his republicanism, his Machiavellianism—and the hows—how he reacted to unpredictable events, how he took over the Socialist Party, and how he recuperated the communist vote. This is the first English-language biography by an American sensitive to the gaps in U.S. readers' knowledge of French politics.
Sally Baumann-Reynolds received her AB in French from Indiana University and MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She taught for seven years at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and since then has been teaching and writing in the Raleigh area.
