How do we explain what Perry Anderson calls "the bizarre prominence of Bernard-Henri L�vy," easily the best-known "thinker" under sixty in France? "It would," he continues, "be difficult to imagine a more extraordinary reversal of national standards of taste and intelligence than the attention accorded this crass booby in France's public sphere, despite innumerable demonstrations of his inability to get a fact or an idea straight. Could such a grotesque flourish in any other major Western ...

At the age of eighteen Lucy Wadham ran away from English boys and into the arms of a Frenchman. Twenty-five years later, having married in a French Catholic Church, put her children through the French educational system and divorced in a French court of law, Wadham is perfectly placed to explore the differences between Britain and France.Using both her personal experiences and the lessons of French history and culture, she examines every aspect of French life - from sex and adulter...

The struggle for the soul of Europe today is every bit as dire and consequential as it was in the 1930s. Then, in Weimar, Germany, the center did not hold, and the light of civilization nearly went out. Today, the continent has entered yet another “Weimar moment.” Will Europeans rise to the challenge posed by radical Islam, or will they cave in once again to the extremists?As an American living in Europe since 1998, Bruce Bawer has seen this problem up close. Across the continent—i...

This controversial, impassioned call-to-arms for a return to the ideals that fueled the French Resistance has sold millions of copies worldwide since its publication in France in October 2010. Rejecting the dictatorship of world financial markets and defending the social values of modern democracy, 93-old Stéphane Hessel -- Resistance leader, concentration camp survivor, and former UN speechwriter -- reminds us that life and liberty must still be fought for, and urges us to reclaim those e...

'Everything separates us from one another, with the exception of one fundamental point: we're both utterly despicable individuals.' (Houellebecq to BHL)In 2008, two of the most celebrated of French intellectuals Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy ('BHL') began a ferocious exchange of letters. Public Enemies is the result. In their inimitably witty, inimitably fascinating, inimitably confrontational correspondence, they lock horns on everything, incl...

Eye-opening accounts of heroic resistance to religious extremism.In Lahore, Pakistan, Faizan Peerzada resisted being relegated to a “dark corner” by staging a performing arts festival despite bomb attacks. In Senegal, wheelchair-bound Aïssatou Cissé produced a comic book to illustrate the injustices faced by disabled women and girls. In Algeria, publisher Omar Belhouchet and his journalists struggled to put out their paper, El Watan (The Nation), the same night that a 1996...

In light of cultural crises such as the Danish cartoon controversy and the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris, Christopher Caldwell’s incisive perspective has never been more timely or indispensible. Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is destined to become the classic work on how Muslim immigration permanently reshaped the West.This provocative and unflinching analysis of Europe’s unexpected influx of immigrants investigates the increasingly prom...

This provocative look at France's relationship with the Arab world offers a "bracing mix of journalism and history [that] couldn't be more timely" (Mitchell Cohen, The New York Times Book Review).To fully understand the social and political pressures wracking contemporary France—and, indeed, all of Europe—we must look beyond domestic issues. Unemployment, economic stagnation, and social deprivation certainly exacerbate the ongoing turmoil in the banlie...

Christopher Hitchens—political journalist, cultural critic, public intellectual and self-described contrarian—is one of the most controversial and prolific writers of his generation. His most recent book, God Is Not Great, was on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007 for months. Like his hero, George Orwell, Hitchens is a tireless opponent of all forms of cruelty, ideological dogma, religious superstition and intellectual obfuscation. Once a socialist, he now refers ...

Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism--the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has become a pathology, and even an obstacle to fighting today's atrocities. Bruckner, one of France's leading writers and public intellectuals, argues that obsessive guilt has obscured important realities. ...

More than 50 years after independence, Algerian Chronicles, with its prescient analysis of the dead end of terrorism, appears here in English for the first time. Published in France in 1958—the year the war caused the collapse of the Fourth French Republic—it is one of Albert Camus’ most political works: an exploration of his commitment to Algeria.

Why has Europe's half-century of mass immigration failed to produce anything resembling the American melting pot? Deadly terrorist attacks and rioting in Muslim neighbourhoods have now forced Europeans, caught up in a demographic revolution they never expected, to question its success and to confront the limits of their long-held liberal values. By overestimating its need for immigrant labour and underestimating the culture-shaping potential of religion, has Europe trapped itself in a prob...