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De Gaulle

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De Gaulle

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Overview

A deep look into Charles de Gaulle’s personality and upbringing and how these factors influenced the creation of the Fifth Republic in France.

Charles de Gaulle, savior of France’s honor in 1940 and founder of the Fifth Republic, was a man and leader of deep contradictions. A conservative and a Catholic from a monarchist family, he restored democracy on his return to France in 1944, bringing the Communists into his government. An imperialist, he oversaw the final stages of France’s withdrawal from its last colonies in the 1960s. As a soldier, he spent much of his career in opposition to France’s military establishment. Yet, as Julian Jackson shows in De Gaulle, it was precisely because of these contradictions that he was able to reconcile so many of the conflicting strands in French politics. In 1958, in response to a coup by the French military in Algeria, De Gaulle introduced a new political system, the Fifth Republic, ushering in a period of stability that has been held to the present day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913368784
Publisher:	Haus Publishing
Publication date:	03/06/2024
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Julian Jackson is a leading historian of twentieth-century France.

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements xiii

Maps xv

Introduction xxix

Part 1 De Gaulle before 'De Gaulle', 1890-1940

1 Beginnings, 1890-1908 3

2 'A Regret That will Never Leave Me', 1908-1918 28

3 Rebuilding a Career, 1919-1932 47

4 Making a Mark, 1932-1939 71

5 The Battle of France, September 1939-June 1940 97

Part 2 Exile, 1940-1944

6 Rebellion, 1940 125

7 Survival, 1941 160

8 Inventing Gaullism 186

9 On the World Stage, September 1941-June 1942 201

10 Fighting France, July-October 1942 224

11 Power Struggles, November 1942-November 1943 244

12 Building a State in Exile, July 1943-May 1944 279

13 Liberation, June-August 1944 310

Part 3 In and Out of Power, 1944-1958

14 In Power, August 1944-May 1945 335

15 From Liberator to Saviour, May 1945-December 1946 368

16 The New Messiah, 1947-1955 393

17 In the 'Desert', 1955-1958 428

18 The 18 Brumaire of Charles de Gaulle, February-June 1958 453

19 Président du Conseil, June-December 1958 477

Part 4 Republican Monarch, 1959-1965

20 'This Affair Which Absorbs and Paralyses Us', 1959-1962 509

21 Turning Point, 1962 546

22 The Pursuit of Grandeur, 1959-1963 564

23 Going Global, 1963-1964 597

24 Modernizing Monarch, 1959-1964 616

25 Half-Time, 1965 645

Part 5 Towards the End, 1966-1970

26 Upsetting the Applecart, 1966-1967 671

27 Diminishing Returns 693

28 Revolution, 1968 709

29 The End, June 1968-November 1970 738

30 Myth, Legacy and Achievement 762

Bibliographical Note 779

Biographies 790

Notes 818

Index 871

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Editorial Reviews

"Jackson weaves the particularities of de Gaulle's life into a clear picture. . . . [An] excellent introduction."

Booklist

"This excellent account is a must-read."

The Good Book Guide

"Intelligent and entertaining. . . . It will be top of the modern French history reading lists for years to come."

Times Literary Supplement

"A concise and distinguished book."

Sunday Telegraph

Jackson makes it so clear how tied to the history and soul of his country Charles De Gaulle was, and the triumph of this biography is in so expertly showing how that relationship operated throughout De Gaulle’s life. For someone wanting to know something about the character and ideals of France, you can find them eloquently and expertly expressed by this wonderful retelling of the life of Charles De Gaulle.

Books and (Re)views

[An] outstanding biography…with scholarship of the highest class…A truly great book, for after this all other biographies can be cast aside.

The Telegraph

Shows the art of historical biography alive and well, reminding us that memories of war and fierce patriotism could also be a constructive force in the remaking of postwar Europe.

New Statesman - John Bew

Jackson has brought de Gaulle to life for English speakers, while revealing the many ways the great Frenchman remains relevant to us today…[A] splendid biography.

Walter M. Hudsonn Interest

Everything about Charles de Gaulle was outsized: his physical frame, the range of his strategic thinking, his commitment to French prestige, his personal austerity. He saved his country twice: in 1940–1944, by maintaining a French presence in the fight against Hitler; and after 1958 by ending a fruitless war in Algeria and by giving France an effective governing structure. Julian Jackson brings commensurate qualities to this admiring but clear-sighted biography: unrestricted access to the archives, commanding knowledge of the period, and an eye for revelatory detail. Here at last is the biography this titanic figure deserves.

Robert O. Paxton

A gripping and insightful account of the man who was at the heart of all the main events of French (and therefore European) history in the twentieth century.

Times Literary Supplement - Tim Crane

[A] tremendous life of de Gaulle…Jackson is the author of a memorable sequence of histories of 1930s and 1940s France, but this is the peak, lucid and witty from first to last, charitable where possible, merciless where necessary, carefully quarried down to the last cobblestone of Paris and Algiers.

London Review of Books - Ferdinand Mount

A sweeping-yet-concise introduction to the most brilliant, infuriating, and ineffably French of men.

New York Times - Ross Douthat

An unforgettable portrait of a divisive, awkward, self-contradictory but immensely impressive figure, [written] with empathy, deep scholarship and shafts of enlivening Gallic wit. Jackson’s de Gaulle epitomizes the untranslatable French concepts of gloire and grandeur; but his biography is also a riveting profile of a figure whose private life, personal sadnesses, unpredictable intellectual passions and achievements, and astounding qualities of perseverance made him truly a ‘great man’, albeit a uniquely exasperating one.

Roy Foster

Jackson’s remarkable new biography of Charles de Gaulle is a gripping read, even for those familiar with the dramatic histories in which he played a leading role. It works so well because Jackson weaves into the history of events de Gaulle’s character…Jackson systematically confronts myth with historical research, without forgetting that de Gaulle’s myth was an essential ingredient of French history.

Journal of Modern History - Kevin Passmore

This superb biography of the former French leader brilliantly explores how he managed to dominate his country’s political life for decades…Form[s] as good an argument as one can make for believing that a single individual can alter the course of history. But Jackson, with sublime prose and a sure grasp of the politics and personalities of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics, never allows that argument to overshadow De Gaulle’s extremely difficult and domineering personality, and why it never entirely fit the democracy he helped rescue and then presided over.

New Yorker

No doubt the best, most comprehensive, most politically balanced and appropriately distanced [biography] of Charles de Gaulle…Jackson…seems to have written the definitive work on the subject…Deeply impressive, sympathetic to the great man but never overawed by him. It is also exhaustively researched, as beautifully proportioned as a building by Wren, and exquisitely written.

Chronicles

A far more sophisticated accounting of the man, showing empathy for a leader who believed fervently in his own moment in time, a man who was emblematic of France’s fatalistic view of itself…For anyone interested in the man or that era, this is an indispensable read…By the end, we have been given an invaluable sense of de Gaulle and his times.

Arts Fuse - Thomas Filbin

Julian Jackson’s biography is a worthy monument to this extraordinary figure. He has a good eye for the telling quotation and a magnificent capacity to place de Gaulle, one of the most fascinating subjects in twentieth-century politics, in his historical and political setting. The result is a wonderful history of modern France disguised as the biography of a statesman.

New York Review of Books - Mark Mazower

Impressive. [Jackson is] always thorough but never pedantic, always clarifying but never simplifying, and he deploys an enormous amount of research with a consistently light touch and a dry wit his illustrious subject might have appreciated…Charles de Gaulle has been extremely well-served by this big and judiciously blunt new biography. The de Gaulle myth will doubtless continue to grow...but de Gaulle the man is painted perfectly in these pages.

Christian Science Monitor - Steve Donoghue

Jackson sets out to demythologize the General without debunking him. With a fluent style and near-total command of existing and newly available sources, he peers behind the monolithic façade to unmask a composite of opposing traits…In crafting the finest one-volume life of de Gaulle in English, Julian Jackson has come closer than anyone before him to demystifying this conservative at war with the status quo, for whom national interests were inseparable from personal honor and ‘a certain idea of France.’

Wall Street Journal - Richard Norton Smith

Charles de Gaulle was among the most extraordinary visionaries of the 20th century… Jackson’s new biography makes awesome reading, and is a tribute to the fascination of its subject, and to Jackson’s mastery of it… A triumph, and hugely readable.

Sunday Times - Max Hastings

Classically composed and authoritative…Jackson does a brilliant job detailing the evolution of de Gaulle from a normal French officer who has contempt for the squabbling, mediocre politicians of the Third Republic into a clear voice for republicanism…Jackson writes wonderful political history.

New Yorker - Adam Gopnik

A truly remarkable treatment of the life of one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century, and a master class in how to write a political biography…This magnificent biography of a man whose foreign policy views have all-too-often been crudely simplified or mischaracterized provides a good point of departure for such efforts toward a shrewder and more empathetic mode of alliance management.

War on the Rocks - Iskander Rehman

It leaves previous works entirely in the shade, largely because of its impeccable research and a rare objectivity and empathy…[A] masterpiece.

The Spectator - Antony Beevor

Beautifully written and comprehensive, it includes very interesting discussions of De Gaulle’s attitude toward French Jews in decades when the French army and French right were deeply anti-Semitic, and toward Israel when he was France’s president.

Mosaic - Elliott Abrams

Fully 60 years after de Gaulle emerged from retirement to found the Fifth Republic, and nearly half a century after he quit the presidency following defeat in a referendum, he remains a towering figure in the French imagination, as Julian Jackson, a British historian, chronicles in his compelling and painstakingly documented biography.

The Economist

In this ambitious and magisterial account, leading historian Julian Jackson explores both the history and the myth…Jackson masters both the public arc of de Gaulle’s career, and the detail of his private life and daily routines. He writes elegantly, with punch, insight, and authority.

BBC History - Robert Gildea

De Gaulle remains France’s most important political figure since Napoleon…A judicious, authoritative, lucid, and engaging portrait…De Gaulle will likely remain the standard biography for many years to come.

The Nation - David A. Bell

[A] superb and equitable portrait…Jackson writes with verve…He allows de Gaulle’s greatness to speak for itself and treats the general’s writings and military, political, and philosophical reflections with the seriousness that they deserve. His judgments on de Gaulle’s thought and action are almost always illuminating and always measured. Jackson’s is likely to be the authoritative biography of de Gaulle.

City Journal - Daniel J. Mahoney

[A] tenaciously researched, nuanced, largely sympathetic biography.

Weekly Standard - Lawrence Klepp

A masterly study of Charles de Gaulle, the most formidable man to govern his country since Napoleon, that leaves not a scintilla of doubt about his greatness.

Sunday Times

A gripping and enlightening reflection on political power and its mysteries…Jackson accomplishes far more than merely compiling a chronology. The book also paints a compelling portrait of its subject’s inner life and its most salient aspect—his natural affinity for power.

Foreign Policy - Bruno Maçães

Everyone should read [this] whether they can remember the events concerned or not. It is a remarkable book in which the man widely chosen as the Greatest Frenchman is dissected, intelligently and lucidly, then put together again in an extraordinary fair-minded, highly readable portrait. Throughout, the book tells a thrilling story.

New Statesman - Antonia Fraser

Jackson has brought de Gaulle to life for English speakers, while revealing the many ways the great Frenchman remains relevant to us today…[A] splendid biography.

American Interest - Walter M. Hudson

A gripping and enlightening reflection on political power and its mysteries…Jackson accomplishes far more than merely compiling a chronology. The book also paints a compelling portrait of its subject’s inner life and its most salient aspect—his natural affinity for power.

Foreign Policy - Bruno Maçães

A meticulous haul through a life of grandeur and bluff. De Gaulle is revealed to be scarcely less ‘Florentine’ than François Mitterrand…De Gaulle’s myopic vision of Europe and its ineradicable nationalisms now looks shrewdly prescient.

Times Literary Supplement - Frederic Raphael

De Gaulle

De Gaulle

Paperback(Second Edition)

Paperback(Second Edition)

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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Customer Reviews