How is it that, in the name of commemoration, the insurrection of May 1958 is so often eclipsed by May 1968, ever famous and still much-discussed?

While May 1968 is seen as a joyful, sunny moment in history, no one likes to think about the four years of civil war between the Algiers putsch on May 13, 1958 and the end of the far-right paramilitary organization known as the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) in the spring of 1962. Extreme hatred and violence, widespread use of torture, police suppression of Algerian uprisings and their supporters, official lies that depicted the retreat from Algeria as a victory, and the initial conspiracy as a triumph of democracy… Written by an American academic, this book reveals the mechanisms behind the repression of a painful reality that durably shaped the French state and its institutions.