Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters (Why X Matters Series) - Hardcover

Louis Begley is a bestselling novelist and a lawyer who retired after a 45-year career as partner in a prominent law firm. His fiction includes Wartime Lies, About Schmidt, and Matters of Honor.

“Begley's riveting details and unremitting passion make this book a worthy successor to J'accuse.”--Jewish Book World
(Jewish Book World)

"No other work in English on the Dreyfus Affair matches the clarity, the concision, and the passion of this one. A lawyer and novelist, Louis Begley explains the legal technicalities and untangles a byzantine narrative. He shows why this abuse of power should still concern us today."— Robert O. Paxton, author of The Anatomy of Fascism (Robert Paxton)

“I can’t imagine a more unequivocal, socially acute, or legally astute book about the whole hateful Dreyfus Affair than Louis Begley’s “Why Dreyfus Matters.”  Add to that the limpidity, the novelist’s eye, the moral passion, and the very considerable narrative gifts that have made Begley’s fiction famous, and you have one of French history’s most tellingly muddled moments, distilled and restored to the drama it in fact was for the country it divided.”—Jane Kramer
(Jane Kramer)

“As a primer on the affair, this is a first-rate narrative and a heartfelt plea to modern democracies to stick to their values and defend basic liberties, however threatened they feel.” — The Economist (Economist)

“A brave new book [and] a pointed warning and reminder of how fragile the standards of civilized conduct prove in moments of national panic.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

(Adam Gopnik New Yorker 2009-09-01)

"Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters is a slim, elegant work--another impressive volume in Yale University Press's 'Why X Matters' series."--Michael O'Donnell, Washington Monthly
(Michael O'Donnell Washington Monthly)

“Particularly powerful in drawing lessons for American society after September 11.”--Robert Gildea, New York Review of Books
 
(Robert Gildea New York Review of Books)

"Concise and precise."--Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News
(Robert Birnbaum The Morning News)

"Begley is a brilliant choice...And he has written a brilliant book, using a lawyer's skill to marshal the facts and a novelist's art to relate them. The result is a history that drives the reader forward and occasionally steals his breath." - Journal of International Law and Politics
(Journal of International Law and Politics)

“Begley provides a lucid and beautifully written account of L’affair Dreyfus from beginning to end.”
—Steven Lubet, The Green Bag

(Steven Lubet The Green Bag)