The French: orderly and anarchic, rational and mystical, arrogant and anxious, charming and exasperating, serious and frivolous, pessimistic, pleasure-loving - and perhaps more than any other people, intellectual. In this original and entertaining approach to France and the French, Sudhir Hazareesingh describes how the French ways of thought and life connect to make them such a distinctive nation. One of the purposes of How The French Think is to convey the ideas of some of the most influential French thinkers of the past 400 years - Voltaire and Rousseau, Hugo and Michelet, Camus and Sartre, Levi-Strauss and Foucault. Sudhir Hazareesingh is able to show how bold, imaginative and sweeping French thought is, how greatly it values high culture (in contrast to the English) and how it has given an almost sacred role to the writer - hence the prominent role of intellectuals in French collective life, and the intensity with which ideas are debated. The book explores the French commitment to rationalism and ideology, their belief in the State, their cult of heroes and their contempt for materialism. It describes their stylistic fetishes, their fondness for general notions, their love of paradoxes, their current fixations with the nation and collective memory, their messianic instincts and their devotion to universalism. ('France', claimed the historian Ernest Lavisse without a trace of irony, 'is charged with representing the cause of humanity.' How The French Think ranges from Descartes to Derrida, and from big moral and philosophical issues to the symbolic significance of Asterix and the survival of the French language in a globalized world.

Drawing on a colourful range of sources, and written with warmth and humour, it will appeal to all lovers of France and of French culture. 'It is unusual to laugh aloud when reading a history of ideas, but I did so more than once when reading How the French Think . Its sweep is thrilling and its expositions lucid, but it carries its learning lightly and is written with an astringent wit. Everyone interested in France and the French will enjoy and learn from this book.' Robert Tombs, Professor of French History at Cambridge University 'Stendhal wrote that a novel was ' un miroir qu'on promene le long d'un chemin '. And no better mirror on the wandering path of French culture of yesterday and today could be found than this wise and gentle book, as learned as it is engaging. Peguy was worried about what God would have to think about if the French were not there to amuse and inform him. Now we know why this might still be so.

' Patrice Higonnet, Professor of French History at Harvard University.