C'était l'Algérie heureuse. 1915-1965. Nouvelle édition

I first want to speak of the Algerian "bled," my cradle, the land where I grew up between 1915 and 1935. But I would also like to evoke my life as a man until 1965, in Algiers, Algiers-the-White, which remains for me the most beautiful city in the world.

In total, I will have spent fifty years on this land that saw my birth. A half-century of Algeria that I want to recount to leave my children deep roots.

For it is the roots of men that prevent them from being mortal. Our memories of youth remain our true riches, our most beautiful heritage. When they read us, "in the evening by candlelight," our children or our children's children may perhaps say upon closing this book: "It was the time of happy Algeria."

Author of nearly two hundred medical publications, professor of infectious and tropical diseases in Algiers, then in Dijon, Fernand Destaing developed in this latter city a second activity of Medicine and History which resulted in the creation of a module, about thirty publications, and about twenty theses.

On these same themes - the suffering, illness, and death of famous figures - he wrote five books:

• La Fin des hommes illustres (Presses de la Cité, 1977)
• Ces maladies qui ont changé le monde (Presses de la Cité, 1978)
• La Souffrance et le Génie (Presses de la Cité, 1980) (Prix Littré 1981)
• Le Pouvoir et la Folie (Buchet-Chastel, 1993)
• Le Crépuscule des Princes (Buchet-Chastel, 1995)