François Mitterrand: A Political Odyssey

A useful, straightforward, uncomplicated biography of an ambiguous and complicated figure whose checkered career has been marked by a series of defeats out of which he gradually fashioned major triumphs. The contradictions of his life are many: by turns a man of principle and compromise, but more elusive than even a French politician of the left needs to be-and perhaps more elusive than this young British journalist sees or cares to admit.