This reader has been prepared specially for use in the multidisciplinary course Liberté: France's Impact on the Nineteenth Century led by Brian Counihan at Community High School in Roanoke, Virginia, though it is intended to be useful to independent readers as well. The course is intended to present an introduction to the dramatic and hotly-contested progress of French society as it entered, and helped to create, the modern age. I have brought together artifacts and texts from the domains of politics, literature, history, philosophy, and art that attempt to indicate not only the dominant trends in French society, but also those underground counter-currents which have always existed within and against it.
This is the final volume of four; it covers the period from the Franco-Prussian War to century's end.