History / Politics

The attacks of September 11, 2001, the brutal collapse of the financial markets in 2008, the Arab Spring revolutions, the global financial crisis... history has accelerated dramatically. *Chronicle of the Clash of Civilizations* offers an analysis of recent major geopolitical events, placing them within the broader context of history. The author presents a veritable atlas of the contemporary world and its fractures.

Studs Terkel was born in 1912. He grew up and was educated in Chicago. A giant of radio journalism, he is the author of eleven books of oral history, including *Working: Oral Histories of Labor in the United States* (Amsterdam Publishers, 2006) and *Hard Times: Oral Histories of the Great Depression* (Amsterdam Publishers, forthcoming). The distinctive style of Studs Terkel's portraits makes him a kind of Walker Evans of recorded interviews, offering his readers a unique portrait of the 20th century and the United States of America.
The forty-seven interviews collected in "The Good War" give voice to as many protagonists, both well-known and unknown, of the Second World War, who recount their wartime experiences with the gravity, intelligence, lucidity, and sometimes even humor that Studs Terkel shares with his interviewees. "The Good War," for which Studs Terkel received the Pulitzer Prize, is thus an exceptionally high-quality account of the conflict that has left its mark on the entire contemporary period.

What do we really know about Libya? What lies behind the whimsical and megalomaniacal personality of Colonel Gaddafi... To try to better understand the origins and stakes of the civil war, and to understand how this regime was able to last for more than forty years, Patrick Haimzadeh, one of the best experts on Libya, offers us a clear and complete picture of this country.
It deals with history, from the Phoenician conquests to present-day Libya, including the Italian occupation, as well as human geography, where we learn that this region has always been an interface between the Maghreb and the Mashreq, and also with culture.
This work draws on numerous interviews conducted in recent years with Libyans from all walks of life, as well as on-the-ground experience and confidences gathered through long-standing friendships.

It was thanks to her long-standing close relationship with François Hollande that Cécile Amar was able, with both subtlety and discretion, to observe the metamorphosis of a First Secretary of the Socialist Party into President of the Republic. She followed him, gathered his confidences, noted his witty remarks, and gauged his (increasingly frequent) outbursts of anger and his ever-present sense of humor. The result is a nuanced, highly detailed portrait, alternating between cruelty and indulgence.