My France: Politics, Culture and Myth is a great book written by Eugen Weber. This book is very different in many ways. It is scholarly in approach yet it is very much personal and autobiographical to Eugen Weber.
My France touches on the great epochs that have made Eugen Weber from Romania where she was born and bred, up to the point that he was a boarding student in England. His time in the British Army where he was a soldier during the Second World War.
And so My France: Politics, Culture and Myth is a personal project. This is about Eugen Weber’s own personal life, his journey, and his own perspective. The very book in itself is simply about his self-interests. His wife was born in France and in French. We are no even talking about the fact that Romania at the time Eugen Weber was growing up in the 1920s and early 1930s was very much French in terms of style, cuisine, entertainment, and culture. A lot of Romanians spoke French. Culturally, Romania was simply an extension of France, much more like a French colony.
The book could not have been written. It was not his plan. The folks at Harvard University requested Eugen Weber to write about France at close quarters.
Harvard University Press remarks Fifty years after reaching France, by way of school in England, Eugen Weber presents a series of illuminations on the country he loves, and whose civilization he has made the center of his life’s work.
The book is a museum of France from sports to religion to education and the tempo and colorful ways French people enter and indulge themselves in romantic relationships, personalities, public problems, actions, conflicts, fairy tales, and everyday life.
Weber also offers an elaborate account of France cultural icons and celebrities such as Pierre de Coubertin, Maurice Barres, and Marc Bloch.
Tony Judt of the New York Times Book Review remarks the following about My France: “Where other historians seek out patterns, categories, generalities, and change, [Weber] champions accident, detail, continuity and the particular”.
What Tony Judt says about Eugen Weber is exactly what set him apart from the clutter of other historians. He is not so much interested in theory and ivory tower thought meandering. He is interested in thought and theory in practice and goes about telling the engagement of thought and theory in real practice by real people in the real world. In this way, studying his history abstract is made to play second fiddle to the realities of everyday life.
Today much time and much attention, including money are placed on mental health because people are simply falling apart. People are increasingly feeling that they are not up to the task of the fast-changing hostile world. We need a sound practical matured and mellowed history. History is about learning and using history to cope with the present. But it is so sad to see history so much reduced to theory and how can a historian pull out the best model of history.
Human beings need solid quality history, a rational path to a life that guides their thinking and enables them to live in a peaceful manner. They need a history with which to guide and balm their minds, so as to live above the world’s absurdities as they are.
Solid true history gives people a roadmap to guide their lives; gives people light with which to see the world. The importance of history for the present and the future cannot be overstated. And this Eugen Weber resource should be sustained and encouraged if ever we are interested in saving the human race from simply breaking apart and finally going into extinction. Save the world. Make practical efforts. Be counted.
Show proof to the people around you that you really care and you are capable of acting not just for your own selfish self and personal interests but that you are able to love and operate beyond and above yourself. This is what is called transcendence. When you achieve transcendence, you have gone beyond self-interests.
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