Laura Lee Downs is Directeur d'Etudes at the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is the author of Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries, 1914–1939.

“Childhood in the Promised Land reveals the prominent place of contesting and complementary ideas of the countryside, childhood, education, and play in republican, social Catholic, Socialist, and Communist worldviews as they developed in Third and Fourth Republic France. Laura Lee Downs takes us beyond parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics to the differing cultural projects of each group.”-Donald Reid, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill “This is a marvelous book, written with the analytic power and sensitivity to human experience that only the finest practitioners of the historian’s craft manage to combine. Laura Lee Downs takes us deep into the complexities of the colonies des vacances to reveal a world of working-class childhood that has largely been closed to us until now. She also provides a brilliant history of the grown-ups-Catholic, Socialist, and Communist-who created the colonies with competing political agendas, even as they shared pedagogical convictions that summertime play held a key to nothing short of human freedom. The result is an arresting reexamination of working-class life and social reform that will make this book a milestone in the literature on twentieth-century France.”-Herrick Chapman, New York University

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. Repairing the Body, Restoring the Soul: The Origins of the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1881-1914 2. Toward a Pedagogy in Child Leisure: The Politics of Catholic Defense, 1882-1914 3. Family Placement in a Socialist Mode: The Foundation of the Colonie Municipale of Suresnes 4. Inside the NiÈvre Colonie, 1923-1939 5. Les Lendemains Qui Chantent: Social Movement and Pedagogical Innovation in the Colonies de Vacances during the Popular Front 6. Municipal Communism and the Politics of Childhood: Ivry-sur-Seine, 1925-1960 Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Index

Laura Lee Downs is Directeur d'Etudes at the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is the author of Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries, 1914–1939.

“Childhood in the Promised Land reveals the prominent place of contesting and complementary ideas of the countryside, childhood, education, and play in republican, social Catholic, Socialist, and Communist worldviews as they developed in Third and Fourth Republic France. Laura Lee Downs takes us beyond parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics to the differing cultural projects of each group.”-Donald Reid, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill “This is a marvelous book, written with the analytic power and sensitivity to human experience that only the finest practitioners of the historian’s craft manage to combine. Laura Lee Downs takes us deep into the complexities of the colonies des vacances to reveal a world of working-class childhood that has largely been closed to us until now. She also provides a brilliant history of the grown-ups-Catholic, Socialist, and Communist-who created the colonies with competing political agendas, even as they shared pedagogical convictions that summertime play held a key to nothing short of human freedom. The result is an arresting reexamination of working-class life and social reform that will make this book a milestone in the literature on twentieth-century France.”-Herrick Chapman, New York University

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. Repairing the Body, Restoring the Soul: The Origins of the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1881-1914 2. Toward a Pedagogy in Child Leisure: The Politics of Catholic Defense, 1882-1914 3. Family Placement in a Socialist Mode: The Foundation of the Colonie Municipale of Suresnes 4. Inside the NiÈvre Colonie, 1923-1939 5. Les Lendemains Qui Chantent: Social Movement and Pedagogical Innovation in the Colonies de Vacances during the Popular Front 6. Municipal Communism and the Politics of Childhood: Ivry-sur-Seine, 1925-1960 Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Index

Laura Lee Downs is Directeur d'Etudes at the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is the author of Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries, 1914–1939.

“Childhood in the Promised Land reveals the prominent place of contesting and complementary ideas of the countryside, childhood, education, and play in republican, social Catholic, Socialist, and Communist worldviews as they developed in Third and Fourth Republic France. Laura Lee Downs takes us beyond parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics to the differing cultural projects of each group.”-Donald Reid, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill “This is a marvelous book, written with the analytic power and sensitivity to human experience that only the finest practitioners of the historian’s craft manage to combine. Laura Lee Downs takes us deep into the complexities of the colonies des vacances to reveal a world of working-class childhood that has largely been closed to us until now. She also provides a brilliant history of the grown-ups-Catholic, Socialist, and Communist-who created the colonies with competing political agendas, even as they shared pedagogical convictions that summertime play held a key to nothing short of human freedom. The result is an arresting reexamination of working-class life and social reform that will make this book a milestone in the literature on twentieth-century France.”-Herrick Chapman, New York University

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. Repairing the Body, Restoring the Soul: The Origins of the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1881-1914 2. Toward a Pedagogy in Child Leisure: The Politics of Catholic Defense, 1882-1914 3. Family Placement in a Socialist Mode: The Foundation of the Colonie Municipale of Suresnes 4. Inside the NiÈvre Colonie, 1923-1939 5. Les Lendemains Qui Chantent: Social Movement and Pedagogical Innovation in the Colonies de Vacances during the Popular Front 6. Municipal Communism and the Politics of Childhood: Ivry-sur-Seine, 1925-1960 Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Index