Society and politics
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John Ardagh France in the New Century: Portrait of a Changing Society (Penguin). Long-time writer on France gets to grips with the last twenty years. Attempts to be a comprehensive survey, but gets rather too drawn into party politics and statistics.

Roland Barthes Mythologies (Vintage; Noonday) and The Eiffel Tower (California UP, US). Mythologies is an immensely readable structuralist critique on the socio-historical importance of myth and its signs in France today, accompanied by a series of quirky examples. The short text, The Eiffel Tower, demystifies the Eiffel tower as synecdoche of Paris – he accepts Maupassant's solution of eliminating it from the vista by going to have dinner in the Eiffel Tower restaurant.

Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings (Stanford UP, US). Essential reading to get an overview of the most interesting contemporary French philosopher and artist. His notion of the simulacrum (the image of the essence of an object) and the role of the object as sign within the consumer system is complex but revelatory.

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (Vintage, UK). One of the prime texts of Western feminism, written in 1949, covering women's inferior status in history, literature, mythology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and everyday life. The style is dry and intellectual, but the subject matter easily compensates.

Denis Belloc Slow Death in Paris (Quartet, UK). A harrowing account of a heroin addict in Paris. Not recommended holiday reading but if you want to know about the seedy underbelly of the city this is the book.

Mary Blume A French Affair: The Paris Beat 1965–1998 (Plume, US). Incisive and witty observations on contemporary French life by the International Herald Tribune reporter who was stationed there for three decades.

Émilie Carles Wild Herb Soup (Indigo, UK). A moving and inspiring autobiography of a girl born and raised in a remote Alpine valley in the early twentieth century.

Claire Duchen Feminism in France: From May '68 to Mitterrand (Routledge, UK). Charts the evolution of the women's movement through to its mid-1980s crisis, clarifying the divergent political stances and feminist theory that informs the various groups and placing them in the wider French political context.

Jonathan Fenby On the Brink (Warner/Arcade Publishing). While France isn't perhaps quite as endangered as the title suggests, this provocative book takes a long, hard look at the problems facing contemporary France.

Gisèle Halimi Milk for the Orange Tree (Quartet, UK). A gutsy autobiographical story of a woman who was born in Tunisia, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish family, and who ran away to Paris to become a lawyer, and defender of women's rights, Algerian FLN fighters and all unpopular causes.

Bernard Henri-Lévy Adventures on the Freedom Road: The French Intellectuals in the 20th Century (Harvill, UK & US). Huge, clever and complex essays by contemporary philosopher-celebrity, mercilessly analysing the response of all the great French thinkers, of Left and Right, to the key events of the century. Easy to dip into, surprisingly readable and very provocative.

David Thomson Democracy in France Since 1870 (Cassell, UK, o/p). An enquiry into why a country with such a strong socialist tradition should have had so many reactionary governments.

Gillian Tindall Célestine: Voices from a French Village (Minerva/Holt). Intrigued by some nineteenth century love letters left behind in the house she has bought in Chassignolles, Berry, Tindall researches the history of the village back to the 1840s. She produces a meticulous, thoughtful and moving portrait of rural French life and its slow but dramatic transformation. A brilliant piece of social history.

Eugen Weber My France (Harvard UP, US). A collection of essays, fascinating and offbeat, about numerous aspects of French culture and politics. Some prior knowledge of mainstream French history is needed to make the most of them.

Theodore Zeldin The French (Harvill/Kodansha). Urbane and witty survey of the French worldview – chapter titles include "How to be chic" and "How to appreciate a grandmother".