Examines the nation-building process of continual re-creation and re-invention of more than two hundred years of the history of France. It explores the complex task of creating unity while reconciling regional, religious and cultural diversity in a nation.
Divided into three sections, it covers French history, experience and identity, and seeks to integrate conventional political history with insight into nation-building.
Themes such as social conflict, civil war and revolution, identity and difference, gender, colonialism and decolonization, religion, material and popular culture, and the devastation of war are examined in light of the evolution and continual reinvention of France.

This new study will be of interest not only to students of modern and contemporary France, but also to those who want to understand the ways in which national identities are created and evolve within modern society.