AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: A Savage War Of Peace: Algeria 1954 - 1962 by Alistair Horne ISBN: 0-7366-5100-4 Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc. Pub. Date: 19 April, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette List Price(USD): $96.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (8 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Classic
Comment: A cracker of a book. Horne is one of best living historians writing in English. Relevant information and unforgettable images blend in this narrative. I'll warmly recomend it to anyone.

Rating: 5
Summary: Adeiu, Algerie Francaise
Comment: Of all Horne's French histories, this is probably the most epic. The bleeding sore that was French Algeria led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and almost led, on three separate occasions, to a right-wing military takeover of all metropolitan France. On the other side, the ruthlessly bloody tactics of the Algerian nationalist party, FLN, make the Viet Cong look chivalrous by comparison. There are many memorable characters in this story, including the pied noir supporters (Massu, Soustelle), the French Army leaders (Challe, Salan), and the Algerian leaders (Abbas, Ben Bella, Boumedienne). But the giant of the Algerian story is and will remain General Charles De Gaulle. His political comeback in 1958, during which he founded the Fifth Republic and made his historic address ("Je vous ai compris!") to the pied noirs, bisects the whole narrative: this book falls cleanly into two sections (before and after May 1958), and De Gaulle's leadership in extricating France out of this morass was and remains monumental.

Rating: 5
Summary: The FLN was not like the Taliban
Comment: I take issue with the reader who compared The FLN to the Taliban. If anything the French were more like the Taliban--their use of torture was routine and people could hear the screams of prisoners from police stations every day.
The tragedy of North Africa and the Mid-East after colonial rule is the failure of the secular regimes and the rise of a retrograde Islam. What that area needs now are more people like Nasser or Ben Bella though hopefully with a broader vision of democracy. The alternative is Bin Laden and the Taliban. Any brutalities committed by the FLN (and there were many) pale in comparison to the French many of whom fresh out of German concentration camps apparently brought what they had learned from their captors. French colonialism in Africa was second only to Belgum in its ferocity racism and pure cruelty. That was then--what happens now is anybody's guess.