Jeunesse

Autobiographies usually precede the biographies that make use of them as a source, but Jeunesse arrives ten years after François Dosse's biography of Pierre Nora. The challenges are clear enough. How will a major historian of memory confront his own memories? How will the man who asked other historians to produce “ego-histories” write his own? Nora's response is a mixture of genres—vivid snapshots of the experiences of a Jewish child living in a French village during the Second World War, an essay on his identity as a Frenchman who is also Jewish (as opposed to that of “intellectuels juifs de langue française”), and an account of “the making of Pierre Nora,” the route he has taken to his distinguished career as both a historian and a publisher. One crucial experience was his repeated failure to enter the École Normale, discouraging him from a conventional academic career. Another, about which he says all too little, was spending two years in Algeria as a teacher. A third was his discovery of the “new history” associated with the journal Annales, which encouraged Nora to add history to a portfolio of interests that included literature, philosophy, and the social sciences, a combination of interests that underlies his later success as an editor at Gallimard. Tantalizing readers, Jeunesse ends when its author is in his midthirties, on the threshold of his career as a publisher. All we can do is look forward to another installment of his bildungsroman

Aging, Elder Care, and Social Issues · French Urban and Social Studies · Philosophy · Social Policies and Family