This wide-ranging work confronts the complex question of nationalism in France in its various permutations--myths, obsessions, possibilities, and dangers. French nationalism has always been a double-edged sword, from its beginnings in the French Revolution through the two Napoleonic empires, Boulangism, the Dreyfus affair, the fascist groups of the 1930's, Marshal Petain's National Revolution during World War II, and its latest contemporary incarnation in Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front. The author distinguishes between an "open" nationalism, based on the revolutionary values of liberty...