De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890-1944

This first installment of a two-volume biography is a searching, masterful exploration of Charles de Gaulle from his birth in 1890 to the liberation of Paris in 1944. Lacouture describes de Gaulle's family background, education, exploits as a soldier in the first World War and his service as staff officer between wars, when his published writings brought him into conflict with orthodox military opinion. Exiled in London during WW II, de Gaulle proclaimed himself the incarnation of France, put himself at the head of the Free French movement, organized the Resistance and sought a decisive role in the Allied war effort. Lacouture traces de Gaulle's equivocal relations with Churchill, who alternately supported him and abandoned him in exasperation, and Roosevelt, who ignored and humiliated him, and concludes with a moving account of de Gaulle's vindication in August 1944 when he marched into a liberated Paris. By the author of Vietnam: Between Two Truces , this major biography presents de Gaulle in all his thorny grandeur. Photos. (Nov.)