Customer Reviews

La France contemporaine

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This book was NEVER meant to be used as a French reader, which is what the books "Easy French Reader" and "Better Reading French" are.
La France Contemporaine is a bit pricey because it was written as a classroom TEXT BOOK to teach students about contemporary French culture. It is written entirely in French with the expectation that the reader ALREADY KNOWS the language. The text is straight-forward and accessible, and it teaches students about the complex French government, school and health systems, regional heritage, and more.
So if you are looking for a great intermediate-level French text book, this is it. However, you will be sadly disappointed if all you want are simple, educational stories to improve your French reading skills.

I used this book in college and loved it! It was one of the few books I actually enjoyed reading. Now I use it in my own French classroom with AP level students, and they enjoy it, too. It makes many pieces of the French language and culture accessible while still challenging them and forcing them to learn something. I think the price is appropriate for content of the book. Yes, it is thin and paperback, but it is crammed with information that students need to know before traveling abroad or pursuing advanced studies in French language and culture.

This is a wonderful book!!! I think that every french major, french education major, and french minor should read this book because it seriously takes you inside la "memoire collective de la France" and helps you see the "world" from a french perspective. It is so easy to read and it is really interesting. I recommend it to anyone that wants to know about France from a modern perspective. It incorporates history and links it to modern day problems, it talks about all sorts of subjects (from religion to sexuality) and it has great review questions at the end of each chapter. LOVE IT!

If your looking for a book on contemporary France with history look no further, this is a great and well rounded book.

This book is useful in a French class where the focus is French politics/culture/society. I just wish that it wasn't so painful to read! The authors have an annoying tendency of comparing everything to the US and finding the US lacking. France has a civil union? The US doesn't, so we must be inferior. France's parliament is more stable than US government, French cities have more history and culture than their US equivalents, etc. A lot of times, these comparisons aren't useful or relevant. The government comparison might have been a good place to talk about the difference between a federal government and a more unified, centralized government (which has weak points of its own), but instead it was a black-and-white, "France is best" statement.

The information in this book is useful, but I found myself pulling out hair having to read the obvious bias in it. I think its important to remember that a lot of the information is the authors' opinion, and some of the facts have been whitewashed in the process.

This is an outstanding intermediate book as the vocab is appropriate and it's very readable. Some cultural issues (such as differences in political ideologies) are glossed over while others are much more in-depth. It's also thin and easy to carry around which is very nice. It's probably not the best but it's very good and even short readings provide good background for conversation on the topics.

I read this book almost form back to back, nice reading material, simple and accessible, plus a little knowledge of modern french society. That said, I have to mention its price, it's a thin book that doesn't require a lot of energy to write, and nothing irreplaceable, same kind of thing you can read as much as you want in internet. And if you don't like look at the screen, there's plenty of books at less than one-fifth of the price, like Dover's parallel text, or Penguin's, or Mcgraw-hill's 'Easy french reading' and 'Better french reading', non of these is in any way inferior for reading. As for learning, 'French in action' is for superior for pedagogical purpose. I can only think that too many lazy french instructors use this as textbook, so as to give the publisher and authors a chance to rob our students. I am disgusted, even though it's a helpful book, it can be written by anyone. Nothing special about it.