"Through a presentation and analysis of aspects of the life of the French writer André Maurois, Gossman's book sheds light on an impressive number of crucial historical, political, and cultural problems faced by France from World War I through the Cold War. Understated, suggestive, and balanced in its approach to a number of controversial issues, it succeeds in showing the ... Read moreinterest in the life of a once popular, but now largely forgotten writer, whose previous celebrity, according to a contemporary of Maurois cited by Professor Gossman, had by the 1970s 'collapsed like a soufflé.' This book could very well have the effect of encouraging the soufflé to rise again, even if undoubtedly not to its original height." - David Carroll, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Irvine, USA Show Less