The Hollow Years France in the 1930s [Paperback]

Caught between the memory of a brutal war won at frightful cost and fear of another cataclysm, France in the 1930s suffered a failure of nerve. Brilliantly chronicled here by a master historian, this fateful era could neither solve insoluble problems nor escape from them.[An] arresting and readable portrait of the interwar years.A brilliant survey of the key aspects of French life in the decade before the debacle . . . rendered in lighthearted, witty, but unfailingly perceptive commentary.With the superb mastery of detail that we have come to expect from him, Weber makes the France of the 1920s and 1930s live before our eyes. [Told with] learning and verve. . . . A scintillating introduction to this troubled French decade. -Charles S. Maier,