Below is a selection of titles in English about the French culture and the French in America. The books range from purely cultural or traditional to historical to academic.
We occasionally include books about Americans in France, given the intertwined destinies of the French and American people. We do not receive any commission or profit from Amazon or others if you buy some of these books.
France in America is a bilingual digital library exploring the history of the French presence in North America from the first decades of the 16th century to the end of the 19th century.
GENERAL NORTH AMERICA
French Travellers in the United States, 1765-1932
Department of New York History University
A Bibliography by FRANK MONAGHAN
ANTIQUARIAN PRESS LTD.
NEW YORK, 1961
Parkman, Francis. Pioneers of France in the New World. Boston, Little, Brown, 1897. There are many other works about the French in the New World, and many editions.
Parkman, Francis. France and England in North America. New York, N. Y.: The Library of America – Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1983.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. 1835. Many translated editions.
Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne. “French-American Relations in the Age of Revolutions: From Hope to Disappointment (1776-1800).” Speech given on February 6, 2003, by Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Professor of American Civilization, Dean of Education and Programs, University Paris 7 – Denis Diderot.
Echeverria, Durand. Mirage in the West. A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957.
Ferreiro, Larrie D. Brother at Arms – American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It. Knopf, 2016.
Sainlaude, Stève. France and the American Civil War: A Diplomatic History. University of North Carolina Press, 2019.
Charles River Editors. The Statue of Liberty: The History and Legacy of America’s Most Famous Statue. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
Portes, Jacques. Fascination and Misgivings – The United States in French Opinion, 1870-1914. Cambridge Universtity Press, 2000.
Furstenberg, François. When the United States Spoke French. Penguin Books, 2015.
Marchand, Philip. Ghost Empire: How the French Almost Conquered North America. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2007.
Folmer, Henry. Franco-Spanish Rivalry in North America, 1524-1763. Glendale, California: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1953.
Gitlin, Jay. The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010.
FUR TRADE
Lewis, Hugh M. Robidoux Chronicles: Ethnohistory of the French-American Fur Trade. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing, 2004.
CATHOLIC CHURCH
Pasquier, Michael. Fathers on the Frontier, French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789-1870. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.