On an autumn morning in 1894, Captain Dreyfus was summoned to appear for a routine inspection; instead, as he took down a letter dictated by a senior officer, he was summarily accused of high treason. So began a twelve-year series of events that included his imprisonment on Devil�s Island, the publication of Emile Zola�s passionate J�Accuse, the Rennes retrial, and the pardon and final rehabilitation of 1906. As the Dreyfus case turned into the Affair, the history of a single military career came to display the conflicts that were tearing France apart: military defeat, anti-Semitic furor, and the place of traditional values in a country still reeling from the turbulence of the French Revolution. Told with an historian�s insight and a novelist�s skill, The Affair makes fascinating and informative reading about one of the most celebrated episodes in modern history.
�There have been many books about the Dreyfus Affair, but Jean-Denis Bredin's book is one of the best of them � lucid, well-organized, informed by a fine sense of drama.� � John Gross, The New York Times
�[a] critically acclaimed study� � Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
�If one is limited to a single book about the Dreyfus case and its consequences, this should be it. Bredin has told this story with precision, passion, and a vivid sense of character.� � The New York Review of Books
�A brilliant and fascinating book. What is most remarkable about The Affair is the skill and sensitivity with which the author places it in its essential historical setting. It is also a gripping � though terrible � story superbly told.� � The Atlantic
�This is the most judicious and absorbing account to date of the Dreyfus Case.� � The Boston Globe
�This is certainly the best book on the Dreyfus case now available in the English language.� � San Francisco Examiner
�Bredin is crystal clear in his gripping narrative of the complex case. His tapestry glows with all the color of the Belle Epoque and its extravagances.� � Chicago Sun-Times
�There have been other books on the Affair, but I can�t imagine any of them coming even close to Bredin�s work. He is brilliant at placing the myriad elements of the Affair in context with verve and lucidity. It should be a model for future historians.� � San Francisco Chronicle
