This pioneering work is the first biography for thirty-five years of one of France's foremost modern statesmen. Based on considerable new archival material, it sheds light on the origins of the First World War, the post-war peace settlement, inter-war international finance, as well as the feminist and animal rights movements in France at the beginning of the twentieth century. Raymond Poincare is a subtle and fascinating portrait of this most prominent, yet most elusive, of European leaders.