Reviews

In this ``Year of De Gaulle'' (who was born 100 years ago and died 20 years ago), it is pleasing to note the publication in English of the first volume of a solid (massive) two-volume biography of the general first published in France in 1984. Lacouture, whose earlier De Gaulle ( LJ 9/15/66) was called by Brian Crozier ``perhaps the best book in French on De Gaulle,'' is a distinguished French journalist who has thoroughly read all of De Gaulle's own writings and interviewed many of his contemporaries. The resulting account gives readers a clearer understanding of the general's career up to the 1944 liberation of Paris. Volume 2, is eagerly anticipated: it is scheduled for publication in 1991 and will cover his controversial years in power (and include the complete bibliography for this work). While it seems too early to apply the term ``definitive'' to any De Gaulle biography, this version should become the standard due to its thoroughness, style, French perspective, and critical insight. Highly recommended.-- William C. McCully, Park Ridge P.L., Ill.

This first installment of a two-volume biography is a searching, masterful exploration of Charles de Gaulle from his birth in 1890 to the liberation of Paris in 1944. Lacouture describes de Gaulle's family background, education, exploits as a soldier in the first World War and his service as staff officer between wars, when his published writings brought him into conflict with orthodox military opinion. Exiled in London during WW II, de Gaulle proclaimed himself the incarnation of France, put himself at the head of the Free French movement, organized the Resistance and sought a decisive role in the Allied war effort. Lacouture traces de Gaulle's equivocal relations with Churchill, who alternately supported him and abandoned him in exasperation, and Roosevelt, who ignored and humiliated him, and concludes with a moving account of de Gaulle's vindication in August 1944 when he marched into a liberated Paris. By the author of Vietnam: Between Two Truces , this major biography presents de Gaulle in all his thorny grandeur. Photos. (Nov.)