JEAN MONNET AND THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

by Serge & Merry Bromberger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 1969

A journalistic rendition of an extraordinary career: the petty businessman who attained incalculable economic influence, the provincial Frenchman who fought against parochialism. The book's approach allows for little detached perspective on the issues of European cooperation, due to the authors' enthusiasm for Monnet's commitments and to their narrative organization. They spend more time telling us about Monnet's imagination and concrete grasp than detailing the innovations he achieved. But his role in fueling two war efforts, his League of Nations participation, his ties with Churchill and Roosevelt, all less familiar than his later achievements, are confided with chatty circumstantiality. Euratom and Monnet's hopes for a European army are discussed in addition to the central story of postwar recovery, the Schuman Plan, the Coal and Steel Community, the difficult birth and development of the Common Market. Monnet, ultimately obliged to set aside his supranationalist expectations, fought a variety of battles with politicians, administrators, lesser financiers, patriots reconstructed and unreconstructed, and it makes a fascinating chronicle, however deficient in analysis -- medium-weight reading for those with a prior interest, the book was first published in France in 1968.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward-McCann

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION