Charles de Gaulle describes in this work the epic of Free France during the Second World War and describes its course with great care. He adds, in support of his remarks, numerous documents in the appendix (not in the work as Winston Churchill did in The Second World War ), such as maps, telegrams, letters, transpositions Speeches or interviews. He stands as a defender of traditional French values, a patriot struggling for the greatness of his country, and the first sentences of these Memoirs already reflect his national pride and his vision of France:

“All my life, I have a certain idea of ​​France. Feeling inspires me as well as reason. What is within me, of emotion, naturally imagines France, such as the princess of fairy tales or the Madonna in the frescoes of the walls, as destined for an eminent and exceptional destiny. I have instinctively the impression that Providence has created it for successes or exemplary misfortunes. If it happens that mediocrity marks, nevertheless, its acts and gestures, I feel the sensation of an absurd anomaly, attributable to the faults of the French, not to the genius of the country. But also, the positive side of my mind convinces me that France is really only in the first rank; That vast enterprises alone are capable of compensating for the ferments of dispersion which his people bear within themselves; That our country, as it is, among the others, as they are, must, under pain of mortal danger, aim high and stand upright. In short, in my opinion, France can not be France without grandeur. “

Written during his crossing of the desert, between his resignation from the government 20 January 1946 And his recall in 1958, the Memoirs of War allow Charles de Gaulle to clarify the historical facts associated with the struggle for the liberation of France.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a book by the essayist, scholar, philosopher, and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It was released on April 17, 2007 by Random House. The book focuses on the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events (outliers) and humans’ tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events retrospectively. This theory has since become known as the black swan theory.

The book also covers subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, and ways of life, and uses elements of fiction in making its points. The author frequently shares anecdotes from his own life to elaborate his theories.

The book’s first edition appeared in 2007 and was a commercial success. It spent 36 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The second, expanded edition appeared in 2010. The book is part of Taleb’s four volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled the Incerto  and covers the following books: Antifragile (2012), The Black Swan (2007–2010), Fooled by Randomness (2001) and The Bed of Procrustes (2010-2016).