Charles De Gaulle’s Grand Design, 1967

De Gaulle in Montreal, 1967, Vive le Quebec francais

De GaulleThe president asmonarch

The Concorde: French-led European technology

Pompidou, 1969-1974

Very Big Presidential Projects: Pompidou’s Beaubourg Museum

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, an aristocratic president, 1974-1981

Minitel: France catches up and surpasses in telephone communications

Presidential modernization, also touchesWomen’s and consumer issues under Giscard.He appoints cutting-edge journalist, Francoise Giroud, former editor of Elle and founder withJean-Jacques Servan-Schrieber, of l’Express as the first undersecretary of state for women’s issues.

Moving in different directions: Mitterand, the socialist president, with SPD chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan, 1981

Francois Mitterand, An imperious socialist president, 1981-1995

The New National Library, or TGB (tres grande bibliotheque), a word play on another great undertaking of the 1980s, the TGV or trains a grande vitesse (super –fast trains

Jacques Chirac, 1994-2008

Prime Minister Andreotti with President Nixon, circa 1971

1946 Giulio Andreotti (b. 1919) with mentor, Alcide De Gaspari

Giulio Andreotti, 87, Senator-for-Life , 2007

Enrico Berlinguer, Secretary of Italian Communist Party (PCI); spokesman for Euro-Communism, speaking at the annual party congress, 1976

Aldo Moro, former prime minister, secretary of the Christian Democratic Party, force behind the idea of the historic compromise, kidnapped and

assassinated by the Red Brigades in 1978

In May, 1978 after holding him 55 days, the Red Brigades murdered Aldo Moro to stop the historic compromise

Funeral of Berlinguer after his premature death in 984. The European spokesman for “national” or “Euro- communism,” a form of social democracy seeking independence from Moscow and favoring the adaptation of Marxism to local requirements.

Funeral of Berlinguer, 1984, the final salute

Bettino Craxi: strong man head of Italian Socialist Party

Bettino Craxi: longest serving prime minister, 1983-1987 on the eve of his ouster for corruption

Craxi with a political protege, building and media magnate, and future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, 1980s