A note on the title Times of Crisis: It is unfortunately impossible to reproduce the word play in the title Le temps des crises, which recalls a very popular French song, Le temps des cerises (Cherry Season) written in 1866 by Jean-Baptiste Clément and set to music by Antoine Renard in 1868. It is commonly associated with a time of great upheaval, the Paris Commune of 1871, since Jean-Baptiste Clément himself participated in the “semaine sanglante” (the bloody week) during that revolution.