Description: Archives, monuments, celebrations: these are not merely the recollections of memory but also the foundations of history. Symbols, the third and final volume in Pierre Nora's monumental Realms of Memory, includes groundbreaking discussions of France's past by some of the most distinguished French intellectuals.

Volumes I and II chronicled differences and similarities of the political, social, and cultural underpinnings of French national identity; volume III focuses on the emblems that signify "Frenchness" to people around the world. Symbols includes thirteen essays on cultural icons from Joan of Arc to Descartes; the national motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"; the tricolor flag; and the French language itself. Pierre Nora's closing essay on commemoration provides an overview of the series.

Realms of Memory -- winner, for volume I, of the 1996 French-American Foundation Translation Award -- powerfully demonstrates how a nation can both recover and rediscover its identity through remembrance; how rewriting history can forge new paradigms of cultural identity, and how meanings attached to an event can be as significant as the event itself.

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