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iridium's review
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Genocide, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Colonisation, and War
melissabee's review
4.0
I thought this book was well-written and fascinating. It wasn't quite what I expected- I thought of "culture wars" as more broadly involving things like art and literature, whereas the book is almost exclusively about politics/religion (the chapter on the Eiffel Tower being an exception). But it was interesting nevertheless. I did get bogged down in the many, many names (often returned to, pages later, with no reminder of who they are, even if they were only introduced with a sentence or two). It sometimes felt like eavesdropping on a conversation where everyone knows the participants very well- and you don't- rather than reading a history book. Still, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a snapshot of France during that crucial time.
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