"Francotheque" seeks to provide a French-language resource for undergraduate students of French. Direct access to contemporary French culture and society is offered through carefully selected authentic texts and a comprehensive overview of France and the French is provided under six broad headings - history, multicultural society, media, the arts, science and technology, the Francophone world - through press articles, historical documents, photographs, posters, advertisements, statistics, poems and songs. Each section starts with an introduction. The authentic texts are accompanied by vocabulary notes, and where appropriate, explanations filling in cultural background. One of the features of the book is the "sujets de reflexion", which provide pre-reading stimulus, thus suggesting a particular context of focus from which to approach many of the contexts.