Paris and the Spirit of 1919

Tyler Stovall is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in modern and contemporary French history, in particular questions of race, colonialism and postcolonialism, labor and transnationalism.

• Introduction: a year like no other; 1. The consumers' war; 2. The working class of Paris: definitions and identities; 3. Remaking the French working class: race, gender and exclusion; 4. Spectacular politics; 5. Consumer movements; 6. Time, money, and revolution: the metalworkers' strike of June, 1919; Conclusion: legacies.

'Paris and the Spirit of 1919 is a major new synthesis of the fundamental changes shaping working-class politics and identity in the interwar years. Tyler Stovall persuasively argues for 1919 as a focal point for key transformations in French society and politics during the twentieth century. By insisting on the political significance of working class consumption, Stovall's study brings together the histories of labor and consumerism in a highly original way. Written with verve and exceptional clarity, this long-awaited book both foregrounds and revitalizes class as a category of historical analysis. [This book] should be required reading for all labor and social historians as well as scholars of modern Europe.' Mary Louise Roberts, University of Wisconsin