"The Historian's Craft provides a highly personal, lucid and incisive discussion of the nature of history, its purpose and its methods. It takes the attractive and accessible form of the reflections of a great historian on the practice of his work. For students of history, at a variety of levels, it offers a useful introduction to the subject [...] This book makes an ideal text for courses on historical methods. The preface by Peter Burke places the work in its full context, exploring the career and writing of Marc Bloch and discussion many of the questions raised by The Historian's Craft."--Page 4 of cover.

First published in English in 1973, The Royal Touch explores the supernatural character that was long attributed to royal power. Throughout history, both France and England claimed to hold kings with healing powers who, by their touch, could cure people from all strands of society from illness and disease. Indeed, the idea of royalty as something miraculous and sacred was common to the whole of Western Europe. Using the work of both professional scholars and of doctors, this work stands as a contribution to the political history of Europe.

A renowned historian and Resistance fighter --later executed by the Nazis --analyzes at first hand why France fell in 1940. Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat during the three months following the fall of France, after he returned home from military service. In the midst of his anguish, he nevertheless "brought to his study of the crisis all the critical faculty and all the penetrating analysis of a first-rate historian" (Christian Science Monitor). Bloch takes a close look at the military failures he witnessed, examining why France was unable to respond to attack quickly and effectively. He gives a personal account of the battle of France, followed by a biting analysis of the generation between the wars. His harsh conclusion is that the immediate cause of the disaster was the utter incompetence of the High Command, but his analysis ranges broadly, appraising all the factors, social as well as military, which since 1870 had undermined French national solidarity.