Taking Time Off: A Very French Passion (Sacrées Vacances! Une Obsession Française)

(Flammarion) The French on average only put in 1,250 hours per year of work (compared to 1,500 in America) and retire on average by age 57. In this book, Stanger examines this obsession with leisure.   He examines, in a humorously caustic way, the French love of vacations, free time, four-day weekends, and other forms of non-work, and how the society has been shaped by this obsession. Stanger is an author of several books and a journalist, who worked as the former Newsweek bureau chief in Paris.