Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007.
The intensive use of carbon energies has brought prosperity, particularly since 1945, along with relatively peaceful international relations. Decarbonation makes it necessary, according to Pierre Charbonnier, to invent a new form of geopolitics.
Could Argentina, instead of being the modern country we know, have developed into fourteen independent states engaged in never-ending competition? From the “disunited province” of Rio de la Plata to the affirmation of a single nation-state, a new book describes a quest for unity that lasted five decades. Reviewed: Geneviève Verdo, Des peuples en mal d’union. Aux origines de l’Argentine (Peoples without unity: The origins of Argentina) Paris Flammarion, 2025.
Thirty years after La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy (Saint Bartholomew’s Night), Denis Crouzet revisits the massacres of August 1572—a collective purge, a royal enigma, and a popular initiative, which his new book illuminates with bold erudition by reintroducing confessional violence, with all its historical depth, into the story.
About: Anne-Marie Cheny, Le cercle des byzantinistes. Comment bibliothécaires, savants et voyageurs inventèrent Byzance (XVIe-XIXe siècle), Les Belles Lettres
About: Nicolas Badalassi, La France, la guerre froide et la Méditerranée. Des accords d’Évian à la Perestroïka, Presses universitaires de Rennes
About: Paulin Ismard et Arnaud Macé, La Cité et le nombre. Clisthène d’Athènes, l’arithmétique et l’avènement de la démocratie, Les Belles Lettres
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
The American sociologist Harrison White made a vital contribution to the development of social network analysis. Besides his work in this field, his theoretical synthesis and his understanding of social formations have influenced a variety of fields such as the sociology of art and economic sociology.
Books&Ideas presents a second summer selection, in which contemporary historians tell us about the future of history as a discipline, about how they research and write history, and the way history affects their bodies and minds.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection focuses on ways to shift our intellectual categories.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Historien, citoyen, résistant : la figure de Marc Bloch invite à penser le rôle public des sciences sociales. À l’occasion de sa panthéonisation, Patrick Boucheron éclaire une vie consacrée à la recherche historique au service de la société, où la rigueur érudite se confond avec l’exigence de liberté.
Romancier cubain, Leonardo Padura réalise le portrait intime de La Havane, entre chronique historique et élégie d’un monde en voie de dissolution.
En se concentrant sur la station balnéaire de Lloret de Mar en Espagne, une anthropologue étudie les sociabilités masculines dans un contexte où l’alcool, la fête et le sexe structurent les imaginaires. Quand « tourisme » rime avec « virilisme »…
À propos de : Gérard Bras, Faire peuples, Kimé
À propos de : Michel Biard, Histoire politique du Panthéon. De 1791 à nos jours, Puf
À propos de : Peter Schöttler, Marc Bloch. Une biographie intellectuelle,, Gallimard
