Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters (Why X Matters Series)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.78 (681 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0300168144 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-10-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Meanwhile, the Dreyfus Affair tore France apart, pitting Dreyfusards—committed to restoring freedom and honor to an innocent man convicted of a crime committed by another—against nationalists, anti-Semites, and militarists who preferred having an innocent man rot to exposing the crimes committed by ministers of war and the army’s top brass in order to secure Dreyfus’s conviction.Was the Dreyfus Affair merely another instance of the rise in France of a virulent form of anti-Semitism? In Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, the acclaimed novelist draws upon his legal expertise to create a riveting account of the famously complex case, and to remind us of the interest each one of us has in the faithful execution of laws as the safeguard of our liberties and honor.. In December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a brilliant French artillery officer and a Jew of Alsatian descent, was court-martialed for selling secrets to the German military attaché in Paris based on perjured testimony and trumped-up evidence. The sentence was military degradation and life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a hellhole off the coast of French Guiana. Five years later, the case was overturned, and eventu
"A compact treatment of a complex case."—New Yorker (one of the "Reviewers' favorites from 2009")
"The Past is Never Dead" according to Keith A. Comess. The Dreyfus Affair, a sordid series of events that ripped the fabric of 19th/early 20th Century France, has ramifications for present-day society, or such at least is the premise of this book, one of a series "Why X Matters" from Yale University Press. The author, Louis Begley, is a renowned novelist and retired lawyer. Since the Dreyfus Affair was fundamentally a legal one (and a complex one, at that), a lawyer with a novelist's skills should be ideally suited to analyzing the aracana of this remote past occurrence and portraying it in an appealing fashion. Based on the premise. HAROLD J. REYNOLDS said A LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CLASSIC. Louis Begley, internationally acclaimed novelist and former senior partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, has written Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, a literary and historical classic. In a European society professing the liberalism of the nineteenth century, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew and loyal French army officer, was kept horrifically imprisoned on Devil's Island for treason, though the army and judiciary knew him to be innocent. He was a Jew turned by government into a thing, a thing to be broken and shackled. In his years at Devil's Island, he became a burnt out case, a fore-shadow of. Don't judge a book by itstitle? D. G. Burkhart 2 1/2 stars. The book is not at all what it purports to be. On one hand, Begley does an excellent job presenting the Dreyfus Affair, in illuminating and interesting detail. On the other, the effort to draw parallels between the Dreyfus Affair and the Bush administration's was on terror is non-existent. Begley devotes less than 5% of the book to discussing the war on terror, and even when he does discuss it the analysis is thin, simplistic and often more accusatory than factual. Begley is far more interested in condemning anti-semitism, and finding it everywhere, than he is in ma