Product Description

The French drink, smoke and eat more fat than anyone in the world, yet they live longer and have fewer heart problems than the English and the Americans. They work 35-hour weeks and take seven weeks' paid holiday each year, yet they are the world's fourth-biggest economic power. So how do they do it? From a distance modern France looks like a riddle. It is both rigidly authoritarian, yet incredibly inventive; traditional (even archaic) yet modern; lacking clout on the international stage yet still hugely influential. But with the observations, anecdotes and analysis of the authors, who spent nearly three years living in France, it begins to makes sense. 'Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong' is a journey into the French heart, mind and soul. This book reveals French ideas about land, food, privacy and language and weaves together the threads of French society, uncovering the essence of life in France and giving, for the first time, a complete picture of the French.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37243 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 351 pages

About the Author
Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow are Canadian journalists who have spent the last decade working extensively in English and French. The couple, now based in Montreal, lived in France for nearly three years while researching this book. Jean-Benoit is the holder of 17 journalism awards. Julie worked as editor at a publishing house and her book 'Same Words, Different Language' was published by Piatkus (UK). Both have written for numerous Canadian publications, including 'L'actualite' and 'Saturday Night Magazine'.

Customer Reviews

Not bad, could have been better
This book is billed as away of understanding the cultural vagaries that exist in our nearest neighbour. In that respect it does in part fulfil its aim BUT I wouldn’t want to take the book too literally. For starters the two Canadian authors focus their research around their own personal experience (based mainly around Paris) and the experiences of their friends and colleagues, who appear to me to be fairly universally middle to upper-class with the odd bohemian style artist thrown in for good measure. This is deemed to be a good cross-section of the population sampled, but look around you in England and ask yourself – is London the fairest representation of the entire country and its culture?

My other main bugbear is the amount of repetition in the book, points are made, emphasised, re-made then told one more time for good luck. This gets annoying. I know they are trying to drum the point into us but I did find myself skipping pages and feeling like I hadn’t missed anything. Anyway, did I tell you about the repetition?

Well, onwards and upwards as once you get past these petty annoyances this is quite a good book. It is no-where near as funny as A Year In The Merde but does have a light hearted side that makes it a damn site more palatable that it otherwise would have been. The insights into French (Parisian) culture and lifestyle are intriguing and they offer some wonderful paradoxes, most notable was the story regarding a strike by French transport workers who were aggrieved that a train guide died at the hands of street vendors. Well it turns out the guy died of a heart attack so the union stayed on strike to complain about stressful conditions. Were the public up in arms? Not a bit of it.

This book won’t give you a eureka moment but it will gently prod you to start delving a little deeper into French culture, it is not a hard hitting expose offers some easy reading that I certainly enjoyed for the time I read it.

Not a chapter went by without a cliche
Very interesting topic and also some interesting chapters, but the book is clearly about 100 pages too long, contains a number of errors, some already pointed out here.

Something that particularly annoyed me was the constant 'during our years in France not a week went by without a bombing or murder in Corsica', swiping generalisations that undermine the arguments and overall credibility of the book.

You will also get the 'didn't I just read this?' feeling as a number of things are mentioned more than once.

Having said that if you have ever lived in France you will now understand the smugness of all those who boasts about their diplomas from the 'Grande Ecole/ ENA/ IEP/ ESSEC etc'

This book is like Roquefort cheese
A book which should have been written years ago and is immensely helpful in defining the differences between the Anglosphere and the Francosphere, it is unfortunately full of "blue bits" - that is to say sloppy grammar, poor translation ("Alsatia" for Alsace!) and lots of inaccuracies - the most amazing of which is the assertion that Norway (the only country whose population refused to join the EU) became a member in 1974! Mistakes like this (and about the important topic of Algeria) seriously undermine its value. It needs a revised and copy-edited second edition. (Are there no copy-editors now in the Anglosphere ?)