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L'image Publique D'un Homme Secret: Michel Jobert Et La Diplomatie Française

Mary Kathleen Weed
Reviewed by By Fritz Stern
Summer 1988
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Mary Kathleen Weed
Editions Fernand Lanore
1988
282 pp.

A revised Paris doctoral thesis, based heavily on interviews with Jobert and his colleagues, both in France and abroad. Frenchman from Morocco, a graduate of the École Nationale d'Administration, Jobert served French premiers in various functions, most notably, of course, as Pompidou's foreign minister from 1973 to 1974. The book concentrates on the dramatic events of the early 1970s. During the October war of 1973 he gained worldwide attention with his battles with Henry Kissinger (the author notes that the two men resemble each other in some ways) and with American policies. At that time he gained the sobriquet "Jobert of Arabia." From 1981 to 1983, he was Mitterrand's minister for foreign trade. An informed, sympathetic account of a complex and very private person, an ambitious, nonconformist political actor and reformer, and a novelist.

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