French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Interpretation of France under Two Occupations, 1914-1918/1940-1944

An extraordinary history of French lives under occupation in the First and Second World Wars, this is an intimate, unforgettable meditation on the strange mixture of compromise and betrayal, collaboration and resistance that marks defeat, written by one of the greatest historians of France.’A splendid book for comprehending human kind … Cobb has a strong sense of how ordinary life has to go on, even through disasters, and a sensitivity for what it was like at the time, matched by a gift for the telling phrase’ Economist’Prophet of the past, Richard Cobb is a visionary’ New York Review of Books’His France – urban, northern, provincial, pedestrian, noisy, unpuritanical, festive – was in contrast to, and predicated upon, another France: bureaucratic, official, suburban, safe’ Julian Barnes

Reviews of French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Interpretation of France under Two Occupations, 1914-1918/1940-1944

Richard Cobb is a visionary. His books will take you on an extraordinary intellectual and emotional journey. * The New York Review of Books * His France – urban, northern, provincial, pedestrian, noisy, unpuritanical, festive – was in contrast to, and predicated upon, another France: bureaucratic, official, suburban, safe, rule – crazy, scared. — Julian Barnes Cobb was a true historian of life 'from below', using archival evidence to bring alive the reality – and the suffering – of ordinary people's existence. — Geoffrey Wheatcroft * New Statesman *