The book analyzes political uses of the past in France in the 1990s and 2000s. The subject is studied in the triangle of mutual influences between politics, history, and memory.
The introduction brings interpretations of the most important French concepts of memory (Halbwachs, Nora, Ricœur). The content is divided into three chapters, analyzing the mutual interactions of politics and history (so-called "memory laws" and reactions of historians), influences between memory and politics (uses of memory in presidential speeches), and mutual effects between history and memory (developments of French historiography of contemporary history).