In this personal approach to the history of France the author shows himself a part of all that he has met. He describes the geographical circumstances of the country, her fertility, her internal and external communications and the villages, towns and cities in which her people gathered. As he describes the situation he questions - why did Paris become the capital of France rather than Toulouse? What is a frontier? What did it mean in the 15th century? How did France become unified in the way that she did? Thus he shows how all this, which lies behind the outline, determined the shape of France. The author also wrote The Mediterranean and Civilization and Capitalism.