101 Facts about France: History - Culture Nature Curiosities

A country everyone thinks they already know. >101 facts. Each on a page of its own. Every entry reads in two minutes and stands on its own. Sorted into six chapters: - Geography & Nature - Mont Blanc, the Loire, the Camargue, the volcanoes of the Auvergne - History & Archaeology - Chauvet, Carnac, the Bastille, Verdun - People, Language & Cities - Marseille, Lyon, Breton, Alsatian - Revolution, Republic & State - Marianne, the guillotine, the Civil Code, the Panthéon - Kitchen, Wine & Cheese - baguette, Roquefort, champagne, bouillabaisse - Economy, Records & Everyday Life - the TGV, the Louvre, traffic circles, the Tour de France The uncomfortable chapters too. The Code noir, the indemnity Haiti had to pay for its own freedom, the Winter Velodrome, Sétif, October 17, 1961, the nuclear tests in the Pacific. Without accusation, without softening. Checked, not copied. Every number, every date, and every superlative was checked against an accessible source before it was written down. Where sources disagree, the range is given. Where scholarship is divided, the division is in the text. Mont Blanc therefore appears not at the familiar 15,781 feet but at the figure from the most recent survey - the elevation changes every two years. At most one entry in five is set in Paris. The rest goes to Marseille, Corsica, Réunion, and Kourou. With key figures, a timeline, a glossary, and an index for looking things up. Useless knowledge can be many things. Wrong should not be one of them.