by Theodore Zeldin

Part One: Why it is hard to meet an Average French Person

1 How to avoid Seeing the Sight
2 How to interpret their regional accents
3 How to tell them apart
4 How to laugh at their jokes, and when to look solemn

Part Two: How to Love them

5 How to appreciate a grandmother
6 How children deal with their parents
7 How they get married
8 Why it is becoming harder to find and keep a spouse
9 What lovers want from one another

Part Three: How to compete and negotiate with them

10 How to find people with real power
11 How to distinguish a manager from an aristocrat
12 How angry workers deal with tough bosses
13 Where to find a Communist's heart
14 What becomes of the drop-outs
15 How small shopkeepers survive
16 How to be friends with a peasant

Part Four: How to appreciate their taste

17 How to eat properly
18 How to be chic
19 How they chose their style of life

Part Five: How to understand what they are trying to say

20 How to make sense of their language
21 How to recognize culture
22 How to judge the effects of their education
23 How not to be intimidated by their intellectuals

Part Six: How to sympathize with them

24 How to interpret the anger of teenagers
25 Why Women's Liberation moves slowly
26 How they treat foreigners and Jews
27 What illnesses they suffer from, and how they survive them
28 How not to be bored in old age
29 How they pray

Conclusion

30 What it means to be French

The Cartoonists

Bibliography

Index