Carole Fink

Marc Bloch is one of the most important medieval historians of the twentieth century. This standing rests as much on his monographs and on his role as one of the founders of the Annales journal as it does on his role in the French Resistance in 1943 and 1944, which resulted in his execution by a German firing squad. Carole Fink's biography focuses on how Bloch's life—as an assimilated Jew in the French Republic, as a veteran of the First World War and as a historian whose career largely played out in a provincial university—affected his scholarship. I think because Fink's not a medievalist, she largely avoids assessing Bloch's work in and of itself, and I'm not sure that I agree with some of the evaluations which she does make. (Although maybe the general historiographical consensus was different at the time when Fink was writing?) Still, this is a lucid and carefully researched biography, and one to be recommended to anyone with an interest in the field.… (mere)