"Here is a wide-ranging and highly ambitious study of France today - of the profound changes, economic, social and cultural, that have shaped it since 1945 and will do so beyond 2000. France in the New Century is based on many months of recent field research - in Paris and notably in the provinces, which Ardagh knows and loves so well. It draws also on material from his earlier acclaimed classic, France Today." "Ardagh examines the Mitterrand years and their mixed legacy; then the Chirac years, and the relative popularity of Lionel Jospin and his Socialists." "The book is less a study of politics than of the lives and attitudes of the French and the complex fabric of their society."--Jacket.