Marc Bloch: A Life in History

This is the first biography of Marc Bloch (1886-1944), historian, soldier in both world wars, and leader of the Resistance, who was captured, tortured, and died a heroic death. Based largely on Bloch’s private letters, diaries and papers, as well as on other unpublished documents, it traces the remarkable life of this French-Jewish patriot under the Third Republic. As an historian, Bloch is perhaps best known for The Historian’s Craft, an inspiring set of meditations on his life’s work, and as co-founder of the now legendary journal Annales, which gave rise to a major school of historical writing. Profoundly influenced by the dark events that shaped his era - world wars, anti-semitism, and totalitarianism - Bloch has become something of an intellectual hero of our century, his life an epitome of the endeavour to uphold, in the face of such events, the spirit of unfettered critical enquiry. ‘One of the twentieth century’s most important intellectual figures.’ - Sir Keith Thomas, The Observer ‘Virtually every European historian has a warm place in his or her heart for Marc Bloch …Carole Fink’s well-researched, sympathetic biography, the first in any language, reminds us why.’ - New York Times Book Review ‘Carole Fink has written the first full-length biography of Marc Bloch with thoroughness, sympathy and perceptiveness …an absorbing book …[which would have] pleased Bloch, for whom history was both a fascinating story and a science always in motion.’ - New York Review of Books