Todd, Emmanuel 1951-

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TODD, Emmanuel 1951-

PERSONAL: Born 1951. Education: Attended Institut de Études Politiques; Cambridge University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Home—France. Office—Institut National d'Éetudes Demographiques 133, bd Davout, 75980 Paris Cedex 20, France.

CAREER: National Institute for Demographic Studies, Paris, France, researcher.

WRITINGS:

La chute finale: essai sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique, R. Laffont (Paris, France), 1976, translation by John Waggoner published as The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere, with preface by Jean-François Revel, Karz Publishers (New York, NY), 1979.

Le fou et le prolétaire, R. Laffont (Paris, France), 1979.

(With Hervé Le Bras) L'invention de la France: atlas anthropologique et politique, Livre de Poche (Paris, France), 1981.

La troisième planète: structures familiales et systèmes idéologiques, Editions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1983, translation by David Garrioch published as The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structures and Social Systems, B. Blackwell (New York, NY), 1985.

L'enfance du monde: structures familiales et développeme, Editions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1984, translation by Richard Boulind published as The Causes of Progress: Culture, Authority, and Change, B. Blackwell (New York, NY), 1987.

La nouvelle France, Editions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1988, translation by Anthony and Betty Forster published as The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics, and Culture, B. Blackwell (New York, NY), 1991.

L'inventions de l'Europe, Editions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1990.

Le destin des immigrés: Assimilation et Ségrégation dans les Démocraties Occidentales, Editions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1994.

L'illusion économique: essai sur la stagnation des sociétés développées, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1998.

La diversité du monde: Structures Familiales et Modernité, Editions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1999.

Après l'empire: essai sur la décomposition du système Amèricain, Gallimard (Paris, France), 2002, translation by C. Jon Delogu published as After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, with foreword by Michael Lind, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: French historian and political scientist Emmanuel Todd serves as a researcher at the National Institute for Demographic Studies in Paris, France, where his focus is the rise and fall of groups of people over thousands of years. His work first attracted attention in the mid-1970s, when he accurately predicted the fall of the Soviet Union fifteen years prior to that nation's demise. His findings were based on a number of factors, including a rise in infant mortality rates, and led to his book, The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere.

Nearly thirty years later, Todd turned his attention to another nation: the United States. In After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order he examines the state of the U.S. economy, politics, and social indicators in order to determine the future of the country. Todd looks especially at the condition of U.S. foreign policy, citing the nation's tendency toward alienating other major countries as just one reason why he predicts a decline for the United States that will eventually lead to a loss of its status as a superpower. Though Todd claims to be pro-United States overall, more recent political policies caused him to take a closer look at the way the nation is run. Clare Short, in a review for the New Statesman, summarized Todd's theory by explaining: "rather than being the unstoppable superpower of our imagination, America is in reality rather more like the crumbling Roman empire—overextended with excessive arms spending and inequality and disgruntlement at home." Short went on to call The Final Fall remark "a brave and challenging book which contains a great deal of truth." In a review for London's Financial Times, Toby Moore commented that "Todd argues America has become a force for instability, not international order, because its mounting consumption rate is making it so dependent on the rest of the world…. This means it has lost its self-sufficiency and, as a consequence, the political deference it has been accustomed to receiving from Europeans." Andrej Kreutz, writing for Arab Studies Quarterly, commented of Todd's book that "the work, which is written both fairly and with passion, should be read carefully. At the present critical juncture of history, Todd provides us with a much-needed intellectual challenge which should contribute to serious debate on our available political choices and possible destinies." The volume became a best seller in Europe, prompting Gerald Horne, in an article for Political Affairs, to state that The Final Fall "needs to be accepted not on the basis of the truth of the matters asserted but more so on what it reveals about the state of mind of a segment of European public opinion at this crucial historical moment. In this sense, this is a book well worth reading."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Arab Studies Quarterly, winter, 2004, Andrej Kreutz, review of Après l'empire: essai sur la décomposition du système Amèricain, p. 65.

Booklist, November 15, 2003, Allen Weakland, review of After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, p. 554.

Financial Times, January 17, 2004, Toby Moore, "Guru of the Week: Emmanuel Todd," p. 13.

Foreign Policy, September-October, 2003, Vladislav L. Inozemtsev and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, "Au Revoir to American Empire," p. 74.

History Today, December, 1992, Richard Vinen, review of The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics, and Culture, p. 57.

Nation, January 12, 2004, Stephen Sartarelli, "Where Did Our Love Go?: The French Aren't Feeling Warm toward Us, but It's Not Because of 'Anti-Americanism,'" p. 29.

New Leader, November-December, 2003, Eugen Weber, review of After the Empire, p. 18.

New Statesman, February 2, 2004, Clare Short, review of After the Empire, p. 49.

Washington Monthly, January-February, 2004, Alexander Kirshner, "Eiffel Cower: France's Answer to the Neocons," p. 58.