A classic geographic study is J. Brunhes, Géographie humaine de la France (2 vol., 1920–26), and E. E. Evans, France (1966), is also useful. J. Michelet is still regarded by many as the greatest of French historians. Among more recent general histories of France, those edited by E. Lavisse and by G. Hanotaux are outstanding. A monumental multivolume work is F. Funck-Brentano, ed., National History of France (tr., 10 vol., 1916–36). The many authors of classic historical works on France include, for the medieval period, M. L. Bloch, C. V. Langlois, F. Lot, A. Luchaire, and Fustel de Coulanges; for the 17th cent., Voltaire; for the French Revolution and Napoleon I, H. Taine, A. Aulard, G. Lefebvre, A. Mathiez, and F. Masson; for the history of the working class and of commerce, É. Levasseur; for cultural history, A. Rambaud.
See also A. Cobban, A History of Modern France (3 vol., 3d ed. 1966–67); D. M. Pickles, The Fifth French Republic (3d ed. 1966) and France (2d ed. 1971); A. Horne, To Lose a Battle: France 1940 (1969) and La Belle France: A Short History (2005); J. M. Hughes, To the Maginot Line (1971); M. Marrus and R. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (1981); H. R. Kedward and R. Austin, ed., Vichy France and the Resistance: Ideology and Culture (1985); P. Pinchemel, France: A Geographical, Social, and Economic Survey (1987); M. Larkin, France since the Popular Front (1988); P. Benedict, ed., Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France (1989); C. Flockton and E. Kofman, France (1989); R. Aldrich and J. Connell, ed., France in World Politics (1989); E. Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (1996); F. Giles, The Locust Years: The Story of the French Republic, 1946–1958 (1996); P. Burrin, France under the Germans (1997); D. Roche, France in the Enlightenment (1999); J. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (2001); J. P. Bury, France, 1814–1940 (6th ed. 2003); J. Jackson, The Fall of France (2003); C. Jones, The Great Nation (2003); G. Robb, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War (2007); W. Beik, A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France (2009); E. Berenson et al., ed., The French Republic (2011); F. Brown, For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus (2009) and The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914–1940 (2014).
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