A landscape of popular perceptions increasingly indifferent to French has sentteachers around the United States scurrying for new books that will draw students to thelanguage they love. In many cases, the profession has fixed on Francophonie as asolution, offering, it seems, the practical, down-to-earth usefulness that the profession thinksstudents want and providing, at the same time, a neat link to popular and sometimessimple-minded notions of multiculturalism. Ager's new book, 6 years after his excellentSociolinguistics and Contemporary French, demonstrates thatFrancophonie is far more problematic than many have thought. Less technical than theearlier book, this emphatically interdisciplinary work ought to be required reading for allprospective teachers ofFrench.