$9.99 on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play (August 2026)Marc Bloch: A Life in History by Carole Fink (XXX,000 words, YY illustrations)
“Virtually every European historian has a warm place in his or her heart for Marc Bloch, the eminent French scholar, soldier and Resistance leader who was murdered by pro-Nazi collaborators in 1944. Carole Fink’s well-researched, sympathetic biography, the first in any language, reminds us why.” — Michael R. Marrus, The New York Times
“Marc Bloch, one of this century’s most important historians, is in many ways an ideal subject for a student of contemporary Europe, as his life spans the period of French history from the Dreyfus Affair to the Holocaust. In this clearly written book, Carole Fink has thoroughly documented Bloch’s fervor for history, his deep devotion to France and his courage as a patriot.” — Benjamin Kilborne, Los Angeles Times
“This first full-scale biography of Marc Bloch (1866-1944), French historian and Resistance martyr, is a moving, exemplary analysis of the intellectual as man of action. An assimilated Alsatian Jew deeply affected in his youth by the Dreyfus Affair, Bloch joined the Resistance in late 1942 or early ‘43, driven by ardent patriotism, identification with his Jewish roots and a conception of France as champion of liberty. His capture and murder by the Gestapo was a significant loss to modern scholarship, although his influence lives on in Annales, a journal he co-founded with Lucien Febvre. Fink... sheds light on Bloch’s close brush with death in WWI, his stormy disputes with Febvre and his desperate efforts to save his family from the Nazis. She limns an independent thinker opposed to all doctrines, a medievalist who understood Hitler’s use of rituals, a man of conviction who risked his life for his beliefs, an unmasker of popularly held prejudices.” — Publishers Weekly
“The meticulous reconstruction of the life of one of the great historians of our century and of his important and — during World War II — heroic role in history. An excellent commentary on the intellectual and political life of France during his time.” — William G. Hyland, Foreign Affairs
“[A] sensitively written and well researched biography of [Marc Bloch]... Carole Fink tells this scholar’s life with respect but not hero-worship. She makes exemplary use of her sources. She explains the baffling (to Americans) system of French higher education. The history of the almost legendary early years of Annales is elucidated. She conjures up the shabby genteel world of European university teaching between the wars. Marc Bloch could scarcely have imagined how precarious that world was.” — Reid Beddow, Washington Post
“[This biography’s] hallmarks are competence and thoroughness. Professor Fink has left no stone unturned in her search for her subject... a more detailed and convincing picture of Bloch’s career than has hitherto been available.” — R. R. Davies, The English Historical Review
“... well written, carefully documented, and compelling... [Fink] succeeds admirably in presenting a vivid and insightful portrait of Marc Bloch, the man and the historian. Along the way, she provides the reader with a fascinating view of academic politics in France between the wars, life in the Resistance during World War II, and the development and influence of the Annales school in post-war France. In short, Fink has written a biography whose eloquence, sobriety, and erudition would certainly have pleased Bloch himself.” — Richard J. Golsan, The French Review
“[A] masterful biography... an intellectual biography grounded in lived experience... Marc Bloch: A Life in History is a fine example of what can be accomplished in the biographical pursuit of intellectuals and scholars. Very few professional historians have merited an extended study; Marc Bloch is one whose life and work have been aptly surveyed.” — Jean-Pierre Herubel, Shofar
“Professor Fink has skillfully woven a well-proportioned tapestry of Bloch’s life... let us be grateful for the intimate look this book offers of Bloch, Febvre, and other French historians and intellectuals between the two wars.” — Bryce Lyon, French Historical Studies
“Well written and meticulously researched,... this excellent biography delineates the exceptional intellectual talents and the admirable character traits of Bloch that made him a courageous and true French citizen and one of the most distinguished historians of the twentieth century.” — Bryce Lyon, Speculum
“[A] consistently compelling study of a scholar who did much to shape the later twentieth-century approach to historical studies of the Middle Ages in particular... Fink in her biography successfully reveals the intellectual formation and contribution of Marc Bloch, the politics behind his academic career, and the poignant and gripping events of his experience as a Jew in two world wars... The treatment is sympathetic yet balanced... It is difficult to see how one could write a better biography of a complex, courageous, and brilliant man whose impact on twentieth-century historical scholarship has perhaps no equal.” — Kathryn L. Reyerson, The Journal of Modern History
“... [an] excellent and carefully documented biography...” — Times Literary Supplement
“... an exemplary analysis of the intellectual man of action, whose courage and conviction as a French patriot and old-fashioned good citizen led to his martyrdom at the hands of the Germans.” — Jewish Post and Opinion
“This long overdue biography (the first in any language) is welcome.” — Wilson Library Bulletin
“Carole Fink has written the first full-length biography of Marc Bloch with thoroughness, sympathy and perceptiveness... an absorbing book... [which would have] pleased Bloch, for whom history was both a fascinating story and a science always in motion.” — Natalie Zemon Davis, The New York Review of Books
“Scholars will delight in the fact that Fink humanizes a man who has by now begun to take on larger-than-life proportions in legend and lore, and serious lay readers will profit from reading it as well... Fink’s tone is casual, her style easy to follow. She paints the canvas of Bloch’s life against the larger mural of French Third Republic history. The effect is a remarkable history of an age as told through the life of one man who strove to understand it and teach it to others.” — Richard Polirer, Washington Jewish Week