Valéry Giscard d’Estaing

The Modern President

De: Julien Peltier

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The rise, the radiance, and the quiet fall of France’s youngest president.

In 1974, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing swept into the Élysée Palace as the youngest leader in the history of the Fifth Republic, promising “change within continuity.” With patrician elegance and a reformer’s zeal, he lowered the voting age, legalized abortion, and opened the gilded doors of the presidency to ordinary citizens. He played the accordion on television, launched Europe’s high-speed rail dream, and declared that France’s future would be modern, open, and bold.

But politics, like history, has its shadows.

As economic headwinds grew and whispers of scandal lingered, the bright optimism of Giscard’s early years dimmed. The man who had once embodied the future found himself outpaced by it. In 1981, defeated by François Mitterrand, Giscard left office with a final, wordless walk from the camera — a gesture as elegant and enigmatic as the man himself.

In Valéry Giscard d’Estaing: The Modern President, historian Julien Peltier blends vivid narrative, intimate detail, and a novelist’s eye for atmosphere to tell the full story of the Third President of France’s Fifth Republic. From aristocratic beginnings to battlefield service in World War II, from the heights of reform to the subtleties of political decline, this is the portrait of a leader who sought to embody modern France — and discovered how quickly the future moves on.

Perfect for readers of Robert Harris, Julian Jackson, and presidential biographies that read like novels, this volume is part of the acclaimed Presidents of the Fifth Republic series — a sweeping, intimate history of France through the men who have shaped it.