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.
Under the Ancien Régime, salaries were not enough to live on. Many people had to combine activities to make ends meet. Laurence Fontaine paints a vivid picture of this reality.
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
The “California dream” does not date back to the Gold Rush of the 19th century, but only to the 20th, and is more a matter of criticism than enthusiasm. Louis Warren invites us to put this myth into perspective, and to be wary of the tendency to see California as the laboratory of the United States.
Around 1900, when Paris had absorbed its outlying communes and the city’s lower depths were populated by a range of shady characters, police officers oscillated between repression and social chronicle. These bulwarks against crime were also painters of poverty, who did not shy away from poetry.
In ancient Greece, religious rites were designed to produce a unique state of receptivity. This book, which focuses on the tools used in sensory encounters with the gods, contributes to the sensory turn that is currently revitalizing historical studies.
About : Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, La verticale de la peur. Ordre et allégeance en Russie poutinienne, La Découverte
About: Olivier Alexandre, La Tech. Quand la Silicon Valley refait le monde, Seuil
About: Annabelle Bonnet, La barbe ne fait pas le philosophe (1880-1949), CNRS Éditions
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Economic inequalities have been at the forefront of intellectual debate this year with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Our third selection of articles brings an international perspective on the issue, with a sociological and historical outlook.
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.
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
“Do we have the right to make bets on the future of mankind?” Forty-one years after being the first ecologist candidate in a presidential campaign and publishing his manifesto book, René Dumont’s intuitions and warnings have lost little of their relevance.
In an innovative study that returns Albert Camus’ early works to their rightful place in the canon, Laurent Bove suggests we should view Camus as a philosopher of immanence and of acquiescence to the joy of the world. This reading is enlightening as far as Camus’ thoughts on history are concerned, but tends to gloss over the ruptures that run though his work, which is driven with multiple tensions.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
Construit pour bloquer le passage des migrants illégaux du Mexique, le Mur constitue aussi en Arizona un barrage pour les non-humains. Au nom de la sécurité nationale, toutes les lois de protection environnementale ont été ignorées.
Les architectes rendent aujourd’hui la terre inhabitable : au lieu de réutiliser ce qui est déjà là, ils poussent à l’extraction des ressources et produisent des déchets impossibles à recycler.
Pendant que les appels à la sobriété et à l’adoption de modes de vie plus respectueux de la nature se multiplient, cet ouvrage propose une approche originale : comprendre les pratiques de renoncement volontaire comme une expérience spirituelle, à partir du concept d’ascèse.
À propos de : Sarah Delale, Élodie Pinel, Marie-Pierre Tachet, Pour en finir avec la passion. L’abus en littérature, Éditions Amsterdam
À propos de : Christine Van Geen, Allumeuse. Genèse d’un mythe, Seuil
À propos de : Jean-Louis Fournel et Jean-Claude Zancarini. Savonarole. L’arme de la parole, Passés composés
