Publishers Weekly
France’s president from 1995 to 2007 wrestles with intractable issues amid gridlocked politics in this tense memoir. Chirac’s career in center-right Gaullist parties shows just how conflicted and dysfunctional France’s dual-executive system was: he was prime minister to a president of his own party who hated and undermined him (Valery Giscard d’Estaing), then to Socialist president François Mitterrand, who opposed him politically; during his own presidency he endured a similarly contentious “cohabitation” with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Through it all, he wrestled with, but scarcely resolved, problems with budgets, pensions, France’s immigrants, and European integration. Chirac epitomizes French consensus politics, with its Gallic mixture of grandiosity and realism; in the book he is forever proclaiming adamant principle on, say, pension reform or Bosnia, only to retreat into prudent expediency in the face of mass strikes or military risks. Although ill-served by the off-key translation—Americans say nuclear “deterrence,” not “dissuasion”—he crafts tart, vivid critiques of people and policies, including extended attacks on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and on Bush’s rush into the Iraq War by way of “a dominating and Manichean logic that favored force over law.” His is a revealing, though not quite inspiring, self-portrait of an archetypal figure in a Europe that’s now all but collapsed. Photos. Agent: Benita Edzard, Editions Robert Laffont. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
Jacques Chirac is so alive in these memoirs - whether it's recounting meetings with the great figures of his time or sitting around a dinner table in conversation or fighting it out in the epic political battles of his career. This is a self portrait of a humanist concerned above all with justice, fighting extremism from any political quarter. In page after page, he offers a lucid view on life's big issues.” —Les Echos
FEBRUARY 2013 - AudioFile
Jacques Chirac's memoir chronicles the man who rose to politics in his thirties and was elected mayor of Paris, prime minister, and president of France. As president, he refused to believe that weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq and rejected American demands for French participation in the invasion. Much of this revealing book depicts the forces that shape today's world. But Stefan Rudnicki's ponderous reading makes listening a chore. While his enunciation and diction are understandable, his gravelly voice and low intonation are distracting; furthermore, his French accent isn’t credible. But his deep, rich baritone interpretation does lend this somber topic the necessary gravitas. Chirac earned the nickname “Le Bulldozer,” a reflection of his relentless drive and meteoric rise. A.W. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Candid memoir from France's former two-term president. Best-known in the United States, perhaps, for his opposition to the rush to war against Iraq in 2003, Chirac offers American readers a close-up portrait of a truly old-school French politician. Born in Paris and educated in the tradition of republican leadership and service, the author rose through the ranks of French government, serving as minister of agriculture, minister of the interior, mayor of Paris, prime minister of France and, eventually, president. In addition to the accounts of his political life, many readers will be surprised to learn of Chirac's love for poetry, his early interest in Sanskrit, his fluency in Russian (he translated Pushkin's Eugene Onegin), his familiarity with Chinese history and his lifelong enthusiasm for African and pre-Columbian sculpture. As he demonstrates, these interests were formative in his approach to politics and to the "worsening divide between the poor countries that represent more than a third of humanity and the wealthy countries that do not adequately fulfill their responsibilities in terms of development aid." Chirac describes the shock he experienced as a member of the G7, and he examines the development of France's social safety net and health system as by-products of settlements of political conflicts--e.g., the May 1968 general protest, during which he helped the negotiations. Chirac also provides ample detail about the military and technological underpinnings of national power and gives unique insight on the European Union. Citizenship, leadership and service combine in this memoir of a full political life.
