“pathbreaking book…Persuasively arguing his overall case through meticulous research and analysis.” · French Politics, Culture, and Society“…an exceptionally fine text – one that could only have been written by an author mercifully free, for whatever reason of the phobias and philias about French intellectual life of previous generations.” · New Left Review“This book is clearly an indispensable resource for historians of twentieth-century France and French intellectual life, and a fine resource for anyone interested in a political sociology of the intellectual. Its fundamental thesis concerning the political sources of the antitotalitarian moment in the discourse of direct democracy and the electoral opposition to the PCF is largely persuasive—and a welcome antidote to the many distortions that obscure this key reactive shift.” · Radical Philosophy“I learned an enormous amount from your first-rate contribution. It is a very exciting and intelligent piece of work ... very impressive.” · Michael Seidman"The cooling of their love affair with revolution by many French intellectuals was a signal development in the late 20th century French public life. Michael Christofferson's fresh study, based on an immense and scrupulously handled research base, finds that the impact of Solzenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago (1974) was only the last step in a developing French critique of Marxist totalitarianism going back to the 1950s. This is essential reading for understanding the French left of today." · Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University
