Description: From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation has dealt with les années noires. Specifically, he studies what the French have chosen to remember--and to conceal.
Brief description: Henry Rousso is a researcher at the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Paris.
Review Quotes: Succeeds as a practical demonstration, for a particularly vivid case, of how to study a people grappling with a past. It is remarkable how few similar works there are... One understands a historian's hesitation before the poorly documented and ill-defined wider popular memory as a subject. Rousso shows us, however, how dramatic and revealing this genre can be.--Robert O. Paxton "New York Review of Books"