"This book will change the way that historians think about the recent history of France. It challenges not only conventional narratives of the origins and nature of the French 'economic miracle', but the very categories that have been used to make sense of the social, economic and cultural history of the interwar years, Vichy and beyond. No longer will it be possible forhistorians to use terms such as 'modernisation', 'technocracy' or even 'expertise' without careful reflection on their problematic meaning and their context. All that in a brilliantly written, accessible book" · Kevin Passmore, University of Cardiff
"...a very good piece of historical scholarship. The book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between science, culture and politics in interwar France. The author challenges in convincing ways current historiography through a reinterpretation of an impressive array of published and unpublished sources. It is well written, coherently structured and persuasively argued." · Andrés H. Reggiani, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires
"This is an original and important book. Jackie Clarke has written a fresh, arresting history of a network of advocates of 'scientific rationalization' in interwar France, and in so doing she has developed a new way of thinking about French elites in the era straddling the Second World War." · Herrick Chapman, New York University
In interwar France, there was a growing sense that "organization" was the solution to the nation's perceived social, economic and political ills. This book examines the roots of this idea in the industrial rationalization movement and its manifestations in areas as diverse as domestic organization and economic planning. In doing so, it shows how experts in fields ranging from engineering to the biological sciences shaped visions of a rational socio-economic order from the 1920s to Vichy and beyond.