De Gaulle (Life&Times)
The famous opener to de Gaulle's war memoirs ("All my life I have had a certain idea of France"), with its ambiguous disdain, is the conceptual starting line for any biographer. De Gaulle's idea of France--an idealized, mystically historical France, rather than a constitutionally delineated France--made him a controversial figure for nearly his entire adult life. Jackson, a historian of occupied France of the 1940s, weaves the particularities of de Gaulle's life into a clear picture of his "idea of France." Contemptuous of political quarrels, de Gaulle proved a cagey player who almost always got his way. Jackson's narrative is astutely analytical about de Gaulle's calculated aloofness, and its application to the France he envisioned, from de Gaulle's rejection of surrender in 1940 to his recall to power in 1958 amid the imminence of a civil war. Immensely controversial in life, de Gaulle is generally admired in death by the French, a trajectory Jackson dramatizes forcefully in this excellent introduction.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved