The book Braving the Clouds is the journey of a mother whose son suffers from schizophrenia. A journey that started suddenly, as though out of the blue, but its a journey that seems to see no end. The agonizing pain, the heart-wrenching moments, the trials, and the tribulations of a mother who has no option but to be a witness to this harrowing mental disorder of her son. The denial and subsequently the acceptance. Acceptance of an illness that is treatable but not curable. Acceptance that...

"Dear Mr. Müller, A friend of my sister's advised me to write to you, saying that you could help me return to France. My father took my sister and me to Algeria and left us there against our will. He left, taking our identity cards and passports with him. I cannot live in Algeria. My dearest wish is to return to France and be reunited with my mother and little sister." Thirty years later, Patricia looks back on her painful past: the kidnapping, the three years of confinement in Algeria wit...

Madeleine Melquiond debunks the clichés about senior citizens, the advisors of all kinds who claim to tell sexagenarians what to do, and delivers a portrait of herself and retirees that is as funny as it is moving. She shows that people in their sixties are no longer old people, but adults at last in a relaxed frame of mind, whom society should respect rather than infantilize. She encourages all those who do not accept being judged unproductive because they have passed the retirement age t...

For some, Péguy is “an anarchist who put holy water in his oil”; for others, a dangerous rebel whose “head is full of revolution”. A socialist and a Catholic, a pious poet and a raging polemicist, Péguy turns out to be a man with a sometimes chaotic, always leaping journey. Few authors have had such a controversial posterity as he. One hundred years after his death, it is time to do justice to this unclassifiable thinker, little known in his time, and who has so much to say in ours. Yves R...

1.8 million people are directly affected by psychiatry in France. 350,000 are in hospital. For every 1,000 inhabitants, there is one compulsory hospitalization. Yet this system, which generates social exclusion and stigmatization, dominates. Admitted at the age of 16, Christelle Rosar was hospitalized for twenty years. They tied her down, injected her with drugs, and kept her in a vegetative state. She saw patients who remained in hospital from adolescence until their death, and others who...

Emmanuel Macron lands for the first time in Africa at the Barkhane base in Gao, Mali, on May 14, 2017. His determination is complete: “Operation Barkhane will only end the day there are no more Islamist terrorists in the region and the full sovereignty of the Sahel states is restored. Not before.” Seven years on, jihadists are on the rise, and the French army has been forced to leave Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad may follow… This debacle is not a military one, it’s a political one. W...

My name is Laura, I am 19 years old. I’m a student and I prostitute myself to pay for my studies. I’m not alone in this. It seems that many other students are doing the same thing. It all followed a strange logic, without me really realizing that I was falling. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I’ve never known luxury or ease, but until this year, I’ve never lacked for anything. My thirst for learning and my convictions always made me think that my student years would be the m...

"I am Mathilde, alias Mathilda. I am 37 years old and I prostitute myself to be a free woman. I have been an executive assistant, a sales manager in media, a communication manager for an employers' confederation and a company director in business aviation. But I was a precarious woman, being used for a low price, like a great majority of women in France. In parallel to my work activities, I became an escort to get out of my social condition and not be a free and disposable object anymore. ...

Married just a few months, Marianne gradually discovers that her husband is self-centered and domineering. Attractive and charming in public, he belittles her in private, imposes his habits and favors his own career over that of his wife. Psychological violence is compounded by physical violence. Marianne learns to decipher the moods of this perverse man, and implements strategies to avoid conflict and protect her three children. Not daring to talk about it, and because she thinks her chil...

In 6,000 food products, aspartame is found everywhere in so-called diet nutrition. However, several scientific studies show that this sweetener is harmful for children, pregnant women and epileptics. Used to replace sugar and reduce the caloric intake of food, aspartame actually works in the opposite direction, it develops obesity and diabetes. In this first in-depth investigation of the diet industry, Henriette Chardak exposes a health scandal. She shows why the use of aspartame continues...

"I’ve heard it said that for alcoholics like me, there are only four possibilities: prison, the psychiatric ward, death or sobriety. I didn't go to jail, but did end up at the police station, in a drunk tank. The psychiatric hospital? I was there for a week, it was shocking. Death? I came close to it several times. I've come a long way, a very long way. But today I've come out of it and I'm totally clean." Drowning in Alcohol is the rare story of a young woman who had everything going for ...

“I was born, raised and lived in a Jehovah’s Witness family for forty-two years. In 2009, I left with my ten-year-old daughter. For many years, I didn’t see my parents, my brother or my son again. The experience left a deep impression on me.” Lucid and often funny despite the dilemmas she faces, Sophie Grimbert describes her inner struggle between the little soldier of God she was taught to be and the free woman she always dreamed of becoming. At a time when “new religions” are gaining gro...