In this critically acclaimed work, for which she was awarded the Prix de L'Assemblee Nationale in 1994, sociologist Dominique Schnapper offers a learned and concise antidote to contemporary assaults on the nation. Schnapper's arguments on behalf of the modern nation represent at once a learned history of the national ideal, a powerful rejoinder to its contemporary critics, and a masterful essay in the sociological tradition of Ernest Renan, Alexis de Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, and Raymond Aron. If Schnapper asserts, the fate of liberal democracy is coterminous with that of the national...