Paris and the Commune 1871-78 / The Politics of Forgetting

Colette Wilson writes clearly and authoritatively and her original, scholarly and beautifully illustrated book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Paris Commune, its aftermath in the early years of the Third Republic and French cultural memory overall. Despite the scholarship and political activism devoted to keeping the memory of the Paris Commune alive, there still remains much ignorance both in France and elsewhere, about the traumatic civil war of 1871; some 20,000 to 35,000 people were killed on the streets of Paris in just the final week of the conflict.