Submitted by:   Eric Kohler <ULYANOV@UWYO.EDU>

        This interesting discussion may contain within it an answer to
something that has been vexing me since the start of 1995.

        Like Ken Barkin I am a product of American graduate training
during the 1960's. (Indeed, Ken was a TA at Brown while I was an
undergraduate history major).  Like, I suppose, all of my fellow H-German
list readers I have, over the years, experienced occasional frustration
building undergraduate German history reading lists by the on-again,
off-again availability of books I want my students to read.  The most
recent example of this which comes to mind is Joachim Fest's Hitler
biography. (Of course, on further reflection I could easily add to the
list).

        In any case, this past year I picked up our History of France
course largely to save it from being scrapped from the university
catalogue owing to its not having been taught since the retirement of
Professor Roger L. Williams in 1987.  To my astonishment virtually all of
the old texts I read as an undergraduate and graduate student were still
in print and available for the course. Given my experience in some of the
other courses I've taught over the years (Balkans and Germany), I was
flabbergasted at the survival of those classics in French history.

        Could it be that one explanation for their survival is precisely
because so much frequently inscrutable postmodernist thought is French in
origin these texts, eg., Gordon Wright's _France in Modern Times_ and
William Shirer's _Collapse of the Third Republic_ continue to be available
because they are readable and comprehensible to the non-metaphysical mind?


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