Blake and Mortimer, Saint Louis and the Crusade, Bouaké, spring of peoples, Amazon. Selection of Books of the week.
Yves Sente, André Juillard, Signé Olrik, Blake et Mortimer, 2024, 25€.
New adventure of Captain Blake and Professor Mortimer and last album for the designer André Juillard, who died a few weeks before publication. In a well-managed and increasingly tight closed session, we find our two heroes caught up in the stories of Cornwall. The region's separatists are increasing their attacks, even planning to attack Prince Philipp and the heir Charles, who are to come to inaugurate a mine. The plot is solid, full of twists and turns, revolving around the legend of King Arthur. Professor Mortimer's inventions are once again put to the test and Olrik stands out, through his intelligence and his sense of situations. He is the real protagonist of this adventure, where he plays bad tricks on our two detectives.
After Floc'h's solitary and selfish album, we find the sense of the adventures of Blake and Mortimer, with the necessary so Britishmastered drawings, spicy intrigue. We find there elements which made the greatness of Eight hours in Berlinproof that Jacobs's sequence is now well established.
Robert Paquet, Saint Louis and the 7e crusadeFull Wind, €16.90
This comic strip, directly inspired by the precious story of Joinville, friend of the king and direct witness of the events, tells the epic of Saint Louis and his knights, from their departure from Aigues-Mortes in 1248 until their return to France in 1254. We follow their journey to Cyprus, Damietta, then Saint-Jean d'Acre, the destination of the expedition. Through precise drawings which illustrate the epic nature of the story, the author explains to us to what extent the action of Saint Louis was decisive for the survival of the kingdom of Jerusalem, weakened by feudal anarchy and threatened by the Mamluks.
Emmanuel Leclère, Bouaké – High state treasonNew World editions, €19.90
Twenty years ago, on November 6, 2004, nine French soldiers were killed, and thirty-five injured, in the bombing of the René Descartes French high school in Bouaké, Ivory Coast. In 2021, the assassins were tried in Paris, and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. The dock is empty: no perpetrators, no accomplices. However, France had them at its disposal, ten days after the events. Then let them go. In a counter-investigation based on multiple testimonies and on the judicial file now freed from investigative secrecy, Emmanuel Leclère, senior reporter at France-Inter, reveals the truth of this judicial fiasco which hides high state treason.
Christopher Clark, The Spring of Peoples – Fighting for a new worldFlammarion, €35
The 19the century arrived with its share of revolutions: the French Revolution of 1789, the revolution of July 1830, the revolution of 1848, the commune, in 1870. 1848, however, has a unique dimension and impact, well beyond the French Revolution . In the same spirit, quite enigmatic, in all the cities of Europe, the people rose up to bring down the order established at the Congress of Vienna, with more or less success. The spring of 1848 posed, often for the first time, the great modern questions: the place of women in society, the concept of the nation-state, the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of the Jews. In this volume, the British historian Christopher Clark takes us into the heart of this Europe in full turmoil, and describes the important heritage that we owe to this “spring of peoples”.
The authors of Conflicts publish
Hervé Théry, Amazon. A shared worldCNRS Editions, 2024, 24€
Hervé Théry, who notably produces the “Master Card” section, has been roaming Brazil for almost 50 years. It is the fruit of his numerous studies and investigations which is offered here to the public, in the “Geohistory of a River” collection started in 2021.
The Amazon is the largest of all the rivers in the world: in terms of its flow, its river basin, its length, its gigantism. The Amazon is intrinsically linked to it, with its forests and its populations. But very often, media and activist discourse prevails over scientific knowledge. In a clear language, understandable by all, Hervé Théry delivers here a real geographer's work, focusing on analyzing the landscapes, the developments, the human development which runs through this river space, Hervé Théry shows the importance of this river for Brazil but also for the entire South American continent. Composed of numerous maps and photos, the work is essential for anyone who wants to understand the Amazon.
