Review:
"Childhood in the Promised Land reveals the prominent place of contesting and complementary ideas of the countryside, childhood, education, and play in republican, social Catholic, Socialist, and Communist worldviews as they developed in Third and Fourth Republic France. Laura Lee Downs takes us beyond parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics to the differing cultural projects of each group."--Donald Reid, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"This is a marvelous book, written with the analytic power and sensitivity to human experience that only the finest practitioners of the historian's craft manage to combine. Laura Lee Downs takes us deep into the complexities of the colonies des vacances to reveal a world of working-class childhood that has largely been closed to us until now. She also provides a brilliant history of the grown-ups--Catholic, Socialist, and Communist--who created the colonies with competing political agendas, even as they shared pedagogical convictions that summertime play held a key to nothing short of human freedom. The result is an arresting reexamination of working-class life and social reform that will make this book a milestone in the literature on twentieth-century France."--Herrick Chapman, New York University
From the Back Cover:
""Childhood in the Promised Land" reveals the prominent place of contesting and complementary ideas of the countryside, childhood, education, and play in republican, social Catholic, Socialist, and Communist worldviews as they developed in Third and Fourth Republic France. Laura Lee Downs takes us beyond parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics to the differing cultural projects of each group."--Donald Reid, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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