History in the making
The seeds of Mary Lewis’ fascination with France were planted early. Her father spent a few years there as a young man, working in the offices of the Marshall Plan, so she grew up hearing a steady stream of stories about that country. “I had never been out of North America,” said the newly tenured professor of history, “but when my father would talk about France’s history, it sparked an interest that is still with me.” The geopolitically tense Reagan administration years were her political coming-of-age, and the native Californian went to college wanting to understand the Cold War, studying international relations when she attended the University of California, Davis. She spent her junior year abroad in France, becoming increasingly interested in the diversity of its society. The final seed that would eventually bear Lewis’ intellectual fruit was planted during a political science class she took upon her return from studying abroad. It...