The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation Book

This is how history should be written, rich, deeply analyzed in a tone that is both sensitive but with a little irony of a story teller. The book has the rigor of a professional work, while also having enough anecdotes and facts to appeal to the general reader. Vinen's great success with this work is highlight how varied an experiences like occupation, collaboration and resistance could be. From a theoretical point of view, he ticks all the right boxes, looking at how the German occupation differed based in terms of gender, ethnicity and race, but he does so in a way that does make them feel like shallow academic categorizations. Rather, these perspectives reinforce the human dimension of the history.