Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

Pages: 343 📖

Year Published: 2003 🕰️

Days to Complete: 20

Author(s):

Jean Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow both have extensive experience as journalists. The married couple currently lives in Montreal and both were born in Canada. Both earned a degree in political science from McGill University and both have written for publications such as L’actualite, Saturday Night Magazine, and Report on Business Magazine. Collectively, they have traveled to Mexico, the UK, New Zealand, Algeria, North Africa, Israel, and Turkey.

Learn More about Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow

Three words to describe this read:

Comparative- The purpose of the book was to outline the biggest difference between France and other countries, specifically North American countries, and explain how those differences make sense to the French.

Dated- You can’t blame an old book for being outdated, but I had to keep in mind that it is over 20 years old when reading the statistics about France and how it compares to other countries.

Factual- While I expected the book to be informative since it’s nonfiction, I thought that it would discuss more social aspects of the French. It did breach the topic by discussing economic facts and differences and using historical information to explain them. All that is well and good but for someone who doesn’t usually enjoy nonfiction, it was a little dry.

Quote:

“But one thing is certain: France is not what it used to be. France has never been what it used to be, and it never will.”

This quote is one of the last lines of the book and I enjoyed it the most. I love the idea that France, like many other things, is always changing and evolving so we should enjoy it when we can.